


Demons like Pets

by Cards_Slash



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Alternate Universe - Demons, Cannibalism, Gore, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-02
Updated: 2017-03-11
Packaged: 2018-05-17 20:46:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 32
Words: 32,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5884597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cards_Slash/pseuds/Cards_Slash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kadar brings home a pet that Malik doesn’t want to keep.  Things escalate quickly from there.</p><p>(Written based on prompts.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. bringing home your pet human

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This whole series of tiny ficlets was written based on prompts sent to me on [Tumblr](http://bewareofchris.tumblr.com/ask) and they are posted on the masterlist along with a LOT of art, [so feel free to go and look](http://bewareofchris.tumblr.com/post/112422688784/demons-like-petsau-masterlist).

Kadar was more of a magpie and less of a demon. Every time he escaped to the surface, he came back bearing increasingly bizarre gifts. Once it had been a camel, once a dentist’s chair and several times now a pile of socks and phone cords that he insisted incited chaos on a grand scale. 

But never before had his brother burst through the barrier between their pleasantly warm home and the muddy surface world with anything so monumentally stupid as a full-grown human. It was not forbidden (exactly) to kidnap humans and bring them back but it was generally frowned up on as a practice. Kadar rolled into the living room knocking furniture out of his way as he went. HIs thick wings closed around his body to make himself as much like a ball as possible before he flopped out on his belly and jumped upward. The pride on his face was obnoxious. There was dirt all over his clothes and several scratches across his neck and chest. His hair was thick with filth and his bare arms were littered with deep gouges in his skin as he motioned downward.

The human was already springing to his feet, the alarm at having been ripped through a thin layer of reality into an alternate plane evident on his face. He was feral (at best) with bare teeth and sharp fingernails.

“We are not keeping it,” Malik said. His own wings flexed behind his back as he looked at the human. It was tall and suitably strong but it was still a human and the care and keeping of such a creature was simply more than effort than Malik was willing to expend.

“Him,” Kadar corrected. He said, “his name is Altair. You will like him. I found him fighting other humans. He killed them all with only a knife!” He was clearly proud of the stray he’d found. "Can’t we keep him, Malik?“

Malik did not like humans. They were made of fragile skin and breakable bones. They were flightless and pale and cold to the touch. "It does not want to stay.”

“He,” the human corrected.

Malik glared at him. Anger flushed his eyes red and the sight was usually enough to make even the bravest of humans back down. This one only stiffened and refused to be intimidated. "It does not belong here. It must have an owner already.“

"Nobody owns me,” the human snapped.

Kadar was delighted. "See! Nobody owns him. We are keeping him. You’ll see. He’ll be perfect.“

Malik refused to believe that but he left Kadar to make their new human a nest in the spare bit of space their home still had. He listened to Kadar arguing with the human about how it had to eat and when the human persisted in starvation as a means of protest, Kadar relented. 

This went on for many days. Kadar trying to coax the human into accepting its new life and the human refusing on all accounts to be anything more than intensely displeased with its lot in life. At the end of a week, the human crept into the small kitchen of their home on its toes and came to a brief stop when it found Malik making himself food.

"Hungry?” Malik asked. He held out a skewer for the human to take if he wanted it. The look of distinct distrust did not waver even when the human took it from him. "It will not be so bad,“ Malik said softly.

"You’re demons,” Altair said. He made a point of motioning at the stretched black skin of his wings and the curled twist of his horns when he said it. He might have eventually happened on the scales that covered the backs of his shoulders if not for how he seemed to have stalled out in his ability to comprehend anything. 

“Even so,” Malik said. "Adapt or die. You cannot go back. You will not survive if Kadar decides to release you into the wild. The hounds have a taste for human flesh.“ Then he handed another skewer over to the human who took it with a frown.


	2. choosing the right collar

Someone had told Kadar that a good pet owner had to entertain his pet.  Someone had mentioned that humans were fond of playing with boxes.  Someone had probably asked Kadar why his human didn’t have a collar and why he was allowed to roam around freely throughout their home.

 

It was inconceivable that Kadar would have gone to the surface world and returned with boxes of plastic bricks to entertain his human all on his own.  It was stupid to think that Kadar was capable of the sort of responsible thinking that ended with Altair being the unhappy owner of a new collar.  

 

Altair (who had decided to adapt) interrupted Malik’s attempts to clear out the bones that accumulated in the back of the house.  The sooty sky over their heads was dropping greasy black rain that made everything dreary.  The pile of bones (human, camel, hound, whatever other creature met its unfortunate end in the wild) were gifts from the pup that Kadar had found and hand-reared before being forced to release it when it tried to eat him (for the third time).  The hound brought them carcasses and bones and dropped them in absurd piles that needed constant clearing out.

 

“What is this?” Altair demanded as he yanked at the collar that was buckled around his neck.  Considering his dexterity in most things, the fact that he had not yet worked out how to remove the collar was surprising.  (Of course, it was possible that Kadar was smart enough to figure out his pet would remove the thing as soon as he was left unattended and had bought one with a curse on it.)  

 

“I know there are such things in your world,” Malik said.  "I have had my share of kittens dropped in my lap to know humans collar their pets.“

 

"I’m not a pet!” Altair shouted.

 

Malik had less sympathy for that argument each time he heard it.  Instead of answering it this time he stretched his wings (now that he was outside and there was space) and flapped them a few times to scatter the smaller of the bones that were clogging up the yard in the back.  The others would have to be raked or kicked or picked up manually.  

 

“Figure out how to get this off me,” Altair said.

 

Malik rolled his eyes.  ”I will not fight my brother over a collar.”

 

For a moment, Altair was furious with denial.  It made his oddly pale face twist up in an emotion that seemed entirely too exaggerated to be real.  His cool skin heated with a sudden eruption of blood below the surface as his cheeks pinked.  Malik touched it to feel the heat of the red blush.  His own hands (with much tougher skin) was still much warmer.  Altair slapped his hand away.  ”This is demeaning.”

 

“This is love,” Malik said.  "When humans put collars on their pets it is a sign of ownership.  The collars are meant as ornamentation but they also say that this animal is owned and loved.  This is a compliment.  Kadar does not intend to feed you to the hounds.“

 

Altair did not agree.  Malik watched him storm back into the house and wondered if he should follow the fool to keep him from doing something stupid or if he should just allow it and fix whatever damage the human did to itself afterwards.  

 

(But then, who ever wanted to do yard work?)  Malik said, “Altair!” as he went back into the house and searched out the human.  He found him in his nest with a knife in his hand and blood on his neck.  The collar (clearly a cursed object of some quality) remained impervious to damage.  ”Well go on then.  Finish trying so I can heal you and we can move on.”


	3. proper molting behavior

Malik returned to his house to find the large front room of his home changed from a living space with furniture to a vast empty wasteland covered in sheets of plastic (he hated plastic) and buckets of bloody water.  Kadar was sitting on a cushion in the middle of the floor with his long-slim wings spread out as far as he could manage on either side.  There was blood all over them which could either indicate that he’d gone through some violent transformation or that he’d decided to slaughter a small village just to incite chaos on the surface world.  From behind, his brother did not look very different.  His dark hair was thick and curled around the stunted tips of his horns.  (They were too small yet to even curl.)  The skin on the back of his neck and shoulders was leathery but hadn’t yet formed scales.  His wings were still dark-skinned beneath the blood, the same texture and sort as they had been earlier.  

 

Altair came from the kitchen with a fresh pain of steaming water that he set on the floor before he noticed Malik standing there.  It was obvious from the wan look on Altair’s face that he was not pleased with his owner.  There was sticky pink blood up to his elbows and coating his clothes and skin in a stain.  ”He won’t stop bleeding everywhere,” Altair said.

 

Kadar, apparently realizing he wasn’t alone, turned his head just enough to look over his shoulder.  His eyes were furiously red, blood was streaking down his cheeks in pulses.  His mouth was hanging open to show the sudden growth of his new (far sharper) teeth.  Malik walked around to stand in front of him and smiled at the splits in the baby skin still covering most of Kadar’s chest.  It was stretched thin and ripped open (as much by Kadar’s fingers as by the effort of his body expanding).  The pain in Kadar’s jaws no doubt kept him from explaining the process to his pet.  

 

“He is fine,” Malik said.  

 

“This is fine?” Altair demanded.  He ducked a long rag into the hot water and pulled it out again to squeeze it out over Kadar’s bleeding wings.  The act brought a measure of relief to Kadar who’s body was likely boiling from the inside out.  The water had to feel very hot to Altair and wonderfully cool to Kadar.  "How is this fine?“

 

"He is…”  Evolving was a common term among demons.  Kadar was on the verge of a more powerful body but the word had different meanings for the humans who only evolved through reproduction and never with any speed.  "Molting.  You should feel honored.“

 

"I am so honored,” Altair said back.  He squeezed more water onto Kadar.  His brother hissed with relief as the water ran down his shoulders.  His head tipped up toward the coolness of Altair’s skin.  The sound of Altair’s fragile beating heart contained just behind the frail bones of his rib cage had to be a special sort of torture to Kadar.  "What greater honor is there than this?“

 

Kadar would have pouted at his pet if he were only capable of closing his mouth.  His attempts oozed more blood from his eyes that caught on his lashes and disguised the emerging dark scales that would grow in along the side of his face.  

 

"This is painful for him,” Malik said patiently.  "He is a blood demon.  He craves the taste of fresh meat.  Your lungs and heart are delicacies.  Your skin can be made into an ointment that alleviates the pain.“

 

Altair was close enough to Kadar’s mouth that it was nearly inconceivable that Kadar wasn’t biting into his exposed flank to get at his vital organs.  One of his cool hands was resting on Kadar’s neck as the other let the rag hang loosely to the side.  ”I am a _pet_  and _food_?”  Then he turned to glare at Kadar.  ”When you brought me here did you want to keep me or eat me?”

 

Kadar looked as innocent as possible.  Malik sighed.  ”If he wanted to eat you, he would not have named you.”  He looked at the puddles destroying his home and sighed.  ”Would you like me to go and fetch you someone you could eat?”

 

There was no innocence at all in the naked hunger on Kadar’s face.  He nodded.  Altair threw the rag he’d been using to clean Kadar into the steaming water and pulled it out again.  ”Sure, while you’re up there getting some take out why don’t you try to find me a salad?  I can’t believe none of you eat vegetables.”  Then he squeezed the rag out over Kadar’s shoulders and wings and Kadar sighed happily.

 

Malik considered asking if there was anything else he could get for him and thought he might actually get a list and had no interest in bothering with rounding up many random things.  ”I’ll be back.”  Then he went outside where he could stretch his wings to their full width so he could break through to the surface world.


	4. proper feeding of your pet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ignore any inconsistencies as these were written based on prompts and no greater plot was thought up at this point.

Altair had been an assassin. He’d been a competent, loyal, (one might say master) assassin. He had been raised to believe in moral ideals and had never spent very long at all pondering whether such things as a god or demons truly existed. Then he’d been kidnapped by a grinning demon with razor teeth and thin-boned-wings that had decided to keep him as a pet. 

 

Things were confusing in hell (he had heard neither demon refer to their home as hell but it seemed an apt thing to call this hellish place with no sun and greasy black rain). Malik spoke of things that Altair had never heard of and Kadar brought him toys that were unlike anything he’d seen before. He kept a collection of black cords he said belonged to phones. 

 

(It had been some time before Malik, finally realizing that Altair did not understand what the flat rectangular thing Kadar brought him was, explained the inconsistency of time to him. Hell existed separate from the surface world. They could enter it at any time they pleased, from the dawn of humanity until the death of the earth itself. Kadar had plucked Altair from one time but he gave him gifts from another.)

 

The home that they lived in seemed to have been carved from rock and ash. It was not square but rounded all around them. The walls and the ceiling were scraped and polished, the floor was smooth but dusty. There was a living space with several short halls that fed into other rounded rooms. One for Malik, one for Kadar, one for storage of the trash that Kadar found and brought back for keeping, one for preparing food and the arched openings for new hallways to be made if the need arose. 

 

Altair did not have a room but a nest dug into the floor and filled with soft things layered and layered together. 

 

Perhaps the most troublesome affair was one that he did not even realize until Kadar showed up with a great sheet of plastic and blood oozing out of his eyes. The grinning demon was miserable as he molted (so his brother said he was doing). Altair had been in hell long enough to see the massive hounds that Malik warned him enjoyed eating humans. He’d been in hell long enough to know that there were few that considered humans a worthwhile pet and that Kadar was the only thing keeping him from dying. His attempts to cool the blistering heat of Kadar’s melting body had been one in the same as his attempts to stay alive.

 

Then Malik brought his brother humans to eat the way a mother bird brought its young worms. Malik did not kill them before he threw the humans at his brother and Kadar did not hesitate to tear into his meal with hurried vigor and unusual appetite. 

 

The feeding went on for many days. Malik retrieved a human, Kadar stripped its flesh from its bones. It was only after the blood ceased oozing from Kadar’s eyes and the skin had stopped sloughing off his arms that the demon even seemed to realize that Altair existed. 

 

Kadar was repentant about his failure in keeping up with the mundane daily care that Altair required. He brought him a great bowl of charred meat and a side dish of vegetables that Malik had brought to him. ”It is finished now,” Kadar told him. ”I wasn’t going to eat you ever.”

 

Altair had not considered what he was being given to eat until that moment. ”What is this?”

 

Kadar stared at the bowl. ”Food.”

 

“What is made of?”

 

“Meat.”

 

“Where did the meat come from?” Altair said again. It had not escaped his notice that Malik was gone again. Malik did not often leave for great stretches of time except when he went to the surface world to fetch sacrifices for his brother. The rest of the time his excursions beyond the home were quick. 

 

Kadar seemed confused. The blood that had colored his eyes for many days was seeping away leaving the vivid blue of his iris visible again. His new teeth were sharper than his last set and they changed the tone of his voice when he spoke. ”I think it is goat? Perhaps some kind of cat? I do not know.” Then he must have realized what he was being asked. ”I would not feed you human! You would go crazy. Besides,” he said in a confidential tone, “the meat is much too good to waste on a pet.”

 

Altair took the bowl and Kadar seemed pleased with him.


	5. Celebrating your Pet's (not)Birthday!

Malik had grown used to Kadar’s strangeness in the many years they had shared the same home. The boy had grown from a flightless little wretch into something that looked approximately like a true blood demon. Still, his behavior remained that of a curious child that could not resist the urge to touch and look and steal. 

 

“Malik!” Kadar shouted at him when he found him outside. The rain had stopped at last (it had gone on for many days) and Malik’s wings had a persistent cramp he could not work out with the limited space the interior of their home afforded. Kadar did not bother to go around but crept under his wings and showed him a book filled with pale-human-faces sitting around what appeared to be some sort of dessert topped with fire. "It is a birthday,“ Kadar said. "We should give our pet a birthday.”

 

Malik did not want to participate in this farcical nonsense. ”Kadar,” he said patiently.

 

“What present can I give him?” Kadar asked. He flipped through the picture book he had (undoubtedly) stolen from some child on earth and frowned at the pictures. "A cake.“ 

 

"He will not eat it,” Malik said. 

 

But his attempts were worthless. Kadar spread his own thin-long-bony wings and was gone with a single flutter of intent leaving the book lying open on the ground. Malik reached down to pick it up (there was more than enough trash in their yard thanks to the hounds that frequented their property). He threw it toward the door and went back to trying to stretch the cramp out of his wings.

 

Hours later, Kadar returned with a cake covered in candles and presented it to his pet. ”Happy birthday,” he said. ”Light the candles, Malik.”

 

Malik did not feel like arguing the point so he blew across the exposed white wicks of the tiny candles so that they caught on fire. 

 

Altair, however, was not so gracious. He said, “it is not my birthday.” 

 

“It is now,” Kadar said simply. Then he pushed the cake toward Altair. 

 

The pet seemed confused as he sat there and looked at the flaming confection. ”What do I do with this?” 

 

Kadar said, “make a wish and blow out the candles. I thought all humans did this.”

 

“No,” Altair informed him bluntly but he blew out the candles. He did not eat the cake but stared at Kadar with befuddled horror as he ate the entire thing without pausing. 

 

Kadar’s tongue was longer since his last evolution, thin and snake-like as it flicked out and lapped up the frosting he had failed to stuff into his face. He made an assessing noise. ”That was not bad. Perhaps you’ll have another birthday soon.”

 

Malik rolled his eyes and Altair sighed. Neither of them told Kadar that he did not have to waste time creating pretense to steal cake. The happiness in his face was simply too comical and adorable to damage with logic.


	6. Flirting with your Brother's pet

“What did you do with the kittens?” Altair asked.  There was nothing to do in the house.  (There was never anything to do in the house.)  Kadar had gone out days ago and had not returned yet.  Malik did not seem worried about his brother’s long absence but he also did not have his brother’s need to carry on conversations with Altair.  

 

Malik was carrying the piles and piles of things out of the storage room and dumping it into a massive round pit in the back of the house.  He did not pause in his chore simply because Altair had interrupted him with a question.  ”What kittens?”

 

“You said you have been given many kittens.  What did you do with them?”  He was standing to the side of the hallway that fed into the large round storage room so Malik handed him a box full of water-filled globes.  Some of them had snow in them, some had sandy beaches.  They all seemed to be offering a greeting of some kind at the base.  He carried the box out to drop into the pit.

 

When Malik came he carried many chunks of wood with letters along the side that looked as if they’d been scrubbed smooth somehow.  He dumped them into the pit and dusted his hands off.  The black-glistening-scales on the backs of his hands bristled upward as the muscles in his arms tightened.  His dark skin was flushing red as his eyes went from a mundane dark-brown to a livid orange-red.  A course of fire seemed to rise from the center of his body, spreading outward in thin lines that showed through the thin skin at the creases in his fingers in the spaces between the bones along the back of his hands.  The air around him went suddenly dry and incredibly hot.  His horns that were long and nearly curled in a circle on either side of his face began to glow a faint red-orange just seconds before everything in the pit caught on fire at once.  

 

Altair fell over and Malik looked at him with an amused twist to his lips.  The color was fading from his skin leaving it dark.  A fine dust of ash rained from his scales as he shook his arms.  ”I ate them,” Malik said.  ”There is not much meat on a kitten.  I told him to stop bringing them home.”

 

The fire in the pit was roaring, the smoke that rose from it thick and black.  The smell was offensive.  Altair got back to his feet and retreated back inside to escape it.  Malik joined him, eventually, and paused on his way to retreat to his room.  ”What?” Altair demanded when he was tired of being stared at.

 

“Why did you kill other humans?” Malik asked.

 

“They deserved to die,” Altair said.  

 

Malik cocked his head at that notion.  ”You have eyes that see the hearts of man?  That is a rare gift indeed.  There are only a few of your kind here and all of them are feared.”  He took a step closer and cupped his hand around Altair’s face.  His thumb was surprisingly soft given how rough the backs of his hands and arms were to the touch.  He pulled at Altair’s cheek to peer into his eye and found nothing of note there.  ”Did you enjoy killing them?”

 

“Yes,” Altair said.  There was no use in lying to a demon.

 

Malik smiled at that but did not explain why. 


	7. Lusting after your Brother's pet

Altair had been a pet for a while (a month? two months? It was hard to be sure about time when there was no sun to mark the passing of days) before Kadar happened upon the realization that other pets did not wear clothes. 

 

“You smell,” Kadar said to him as soon as he woke up. The demon was perched on the edge of Altair’s nest with his wings opened behind him and his vividly blue eyes peering down at him. His fingers were stretched out in the space between their bodies. He did not hesitate (not even for a moment) as he plucked at Altair’s clothes and tore them. 

 

“Hey!” Altair shouted at him. The fight was brief and largely ridiculous. He slapped and scratched at Kadar’s thick skin and barely managed to draw a spot of blood. Kadar used the sharpened claw-like nails at the ends of his fingers to shred his clothing to ribbons. They wrestled. (Mostly, Altair felt in the aftermath, Kadar laughed at him while he attempted to free himself from the demon’s clutches. The effort exhausted Altair but it simply delighted Kadar.) "I need clothes!“ Altair shouted at him.

 

Kadar sniffed at the shreds of his clothing and was highly offended by the stink he found. He rounded them all up and took them out back to the pit where they burned the things they didn’t want. Altair followed him on bare feet, slipping in the greasy black dirt and ash. He did not know what he hoped to accomplish when there was no way of salvaging what had been lost. ”You are a pet! Many demons do not even wear clothes. My friend said he saw you in the yard with Malik and he laughed. He said I was adorable for putting clothes on my pet.” 

 

Altair was naked (scratched, bruised and otherwise injured) because someone had laughed at Kadar. ”Those were my clothes!” he shouted again. ”I need clothes.”

 

"Why?” Kadar asked. He looked openly at Altair’s body—at his naked chest and stomach. His gazed paused a half-beat too long as he stared at Altair’s penis and then continued to look down at his legs and back at his face. "Your skin should be protection enough.“

 

There was clearly no dissuading Kadar from the notion. So Altair stormed back into the house and pulled one of his blankets out of the nest and wrapped it around his body. He stayed there for days while the two demons exchanged small talk about his unusual moodiness and how it had all started when Kadar took his clothes. 

 

Malik bothered to say, “humans wear clothes, Kadar.” But it was not much in the way of a convincing defense for giving Altair something to wear. Eventually, Kadar left to go steal more things. 

 

"You will not win,” Malik said when they were alone. "My brother is stubborn. He will not give you what you want as long as you continue to pout.“ 

 

Altair glared at him. ”So I should pretend to be pleased that I am naked?”

 

Malik did not agree or disagree with the assertion. He simply left Altair to contemplate it. He huffed in defeat and abandoned his attempt at modesty. For many days he went along his day without clothing. Kadar rewarded him by stealing him a salad and some bread.

 

Altair did not enjoy his current state of nakedness but Kadar didn’t seem to be deriving any special joy of his state of undress anymore (so that was progress). Altair happened to find himself outside watching Malik shaking the ash off his wings—the span of the wings was massive to the point of being simply unbelievable—as he groaned.

 

"What?” Altair asked.

 

“Something is stuck and I cannot reach it,” Malik said. He had adopted a method of avoiding looking at Altair. Instead of glancing at his awkward (comparatively skinny) naked limbs he looked at the space over his head or to the left of him. 

 

Altair went around to look at his wings for whatever was bothering him. He ran his fingers across the thick leathery skin that was dusted with ash. The heat coming from his wings was nearly blistering. Altair ran his fingers down to where the wings met Malik’s back. There was a crusted flake of ash stuck. Altair’s fingers were nearly burned by the time he managed to dislodge it. ”Better?”

 

Malik nodded, flexed his wings and then closed them. When he turned around there was an odd glow to his face and he looked at Altair—his actual body—and the glow got a bit brighter. He said nothing at all but stormed off instead.

 

The next day there were clothes for Altair to wear and Kadar looked decidedly upset about the development. Malik was gone and did not return for a while.


	8. Walking your Pet

Altair wore pants that Kadar called ‘jeans’ that had a zipper and a button and were initially very uncomfortably tight against his completely bare skin. Briefly, he had considered staging a protest until he was given something closer to what he was accustom but the idea that Kadar would just as easily not given him clothes kept him quiet. Instead, he simply wore the jeans until they loosened. He slept naked. 

 

He’d come to accept his partial nudity the way he had accepted Malik and Kadar’s persistent lack of shirts. Kadar was slightly shorter than him but built with thicker muscle and a healthy patch of hair on his chest that became a line down his belly. Malik was taller, broader and all around impressively large. Altair had started watching him when they were alone in the house, to see how his mood effected the color of his skin and how when Kadar was especially annoying the room would get hot as threads of orange-red-heat ran visibly under Malik’s skin.

 

But the glow on his face when he looked at Altair for too long was entirely different than the blistering heat of his anger. It had taken Altair a while to figure out that Malik was blushing and even longer than that to equate his blush with arousal. The idea of Malik finding him physically pleasing was oddly welcome and unwelcome. Malik’s skin was hot enough to burn him and his size alone was intimidating.

 

The blush was interesting though. Spotted all along Malik’s cheekbones as he stopped by Altair’s nest in the morning. ”I have to go to the market. If you could suffer the indignity of a leash, you could go.”

 

Altair did a reasonably good job of not remember he had a collar on. It was soft and secure enough that it was not a bother anymore. He eyed the leash that Malik held with contempt. The very last thing he wanted was to be taken out and paraded around in front of other demons as the pet he was. Yet—it would be something different than these few rooms. So he nodded.

 

Hell was not what he expected. Altair was not sure why the idea of human limbs danging from a blood-and-fire sky persisted after the months of boredom he’d suffered at the house. Hell was made of ash-dusted streets and grease-stained homes (all seemingly carved out of glassy rock). The center of the community seemed to be some sort of market where vendors had set up permanent stalls housed inside a massive version of Malik’s house. 

 

“No pets allowed!” one massive demon shouted from behind a counter. He was larger even than Malik, his horns stuck up straight from the top of his head and scraped at the ceiling when he spoke. He did not have wings but his yellowed teeth were as viciously sharp as Kadar’s. "Read the sign!“ 

 

Malik did not respond to this but the spaces between the scales on his shoulders pulsed a reddish color. They went to a different vendor (one that was more understanding about pets). The man was tiny and bent. His back was shiny and black but when he saw Altair a pair of wings fluttered out from under the protective covers. His face was smooth and round with empty dark eyes and when he opened his mouth the only sound he made was a long, warbling wail. ”Ha,” Malik said. ”Kadar would not sell him. I am looking for herbs.”

 

The insect-like demon looked disappointed (if it were possible for its face to make any expression at all) then scuttled across his shop to the display of spices. It crept up the wall exactly like a bug and the revolting sound of its wings clicking together kept Altair standing in place. The leash attached to the collar at his throat pulled him forward just slightly but he dug his feet into the dusty ground and refused to move any farther. 

 

"He was not a demon,” Malik said by way of explaining the peculiar thing they had just seen. "We call them cherubs. They are something else.“ He might have said something further but something caught his eye across the way. Every part of his body was suddenly bright and the heat that was coming off him made the signs in the doorway of the shops wave back and forth. A scrap of paper attached to the wall curled up and blackened on the edges. "Say nothing.”

 

A demon (something like a fatter version of Kadar) came with a dull smile to look at Altair. ”Have you taken up farming? I did not take you for raising livestock, Malik.” 

 

Malik bared his teeth at the unknown demon and said nothing. There were many people watching them, a few of them making a comment about the sudden heat that stopped short as soon as they realized Malik was the one creating the sudden increase in temperature. 

 

“Get on, Abbas,” the demon that had refused to allow Altair in his shop shouted. "Nobody will die to save you.“

 

Abbas (the fat demon) sneered at Altair as he walked past him. Malik turned to watch demon go until he was gone from view and then the heat began to lessen. Malik lifted his hand and loosened his fist. The leash he had been holding was a smoking line of ash across his hand. ”We will need to get a new one of these.”

 

They went to a shop in a far corner of the market that sold nothing but items for ‘pets’. There was a selection of collars for hound-hybrids, a selection of collars that seemed to be meant to be used on lower demons (or just demons that liked that sort of thing) and then a wall of items for human pets. The demon that ran the shop was slim and tall, with wings that folded up tight behind her and blood all around her irises. She seemed delighted by Altair.

 

"He is very fit,” she said. "The scars take away from his aesthetic value but the tone of his skin is very pleasing. You could take him to show. Does he behave well?“ She ran her hands through his hair and touched his rounded ears with delight. Her fingers pulled at his chin to open his mouth. "I have something to help with his breath.”

 

Malik did not seem impressed. He picked a leash that had a series of symbols carved into it and said, “I will send his owner if he’s interested. Just this.”

 

On their way out again, they passed a stall that sold meat. It was filled with hanging selections from animals that Altair had never seen before, a variety of cuts spread out on cold tables. A butcher stood in the back haggling prices for the human corpse that he was cutting apart. Malik stopped at his side long enough to look inside the meat shop. ”Is it so different than what you were in your time?”

 

Altair did not butcher bodies. ”I didn’t eat them,” he said.

 

Malik made a noise in his throat. ”Come. We should go home now.” They went along back to the house to find that Kadar had returned from earth with piles of jewels and a cow. ”At least it is something to eat,” Malik said. ”Your pet has bad breath. You should do something about it.”


	9. Accidentally almost killing your pet

“You are lazy,” Kadar said to him (by way of waking him up) one morning.  He prodded Altair out of his bed with poking fingers and grabbing hands.  "Come and play outside.  You will get fat if you keep sleeping so much.“  

 

"What manner of game do you imagine we can play?” Altair asked.  He pulled on his jeans and was then pulled out to the yard.  It must have rained overnight because everything was slick and dark.  There was a fresh carcass (of something that had viciously sharp tusks and leathery spotted skin) near the door and paw prints much larger than his hands leading away from the door.  

 

“I could throw a ball for you,” Kadar said.  He did not have a ball but two short swords with pleasingly shiny-steel blades.  The grin on his face was blood-thirsty and proud. “I did not think you would approve of such a mundane game.”

 

Altair took the sword from him.  ”This is not a game.”

 

“You cannot kill me,” Kadar said.  "I _will_ not kill you.  It is all in good fun.”  

 

The sword had a nice weight and length to it.  It was crafted with precision and care even if the make of it did not seem familiar to him.  He shifted his grip on the hilt and took his place opposite Kadar.  ”Demons cannot die?”

 

“I did not say that,” Kadar said.  "Although it is true.  Some demons cannot die.  Malik cannot.“  Then he was attacking without warning and Altair was startled but the ferocity of it.  

 

The fights were brief but intense.  Kadar started and stopped them.  When he was finished with a match (regardless of whether he was winning or losing) he simply spread his wings and flapped them to move his body backward away from Altair.  The force of the displaced wind knocked Altair over each time.  His elbows were scrapped raw by the rough ground, his body felt battered by the continuous assault.  These minor aggravations were hardly worthy of note.

 

Then Kadar happened a lucky strike that cut across his bare chest deep enough it felt as if it gouged his bones.  Altair was paralyzed by the pain even before he looked down to see the naked white of his ribs between the gaps of his flesh.  

 

"Oh shit,” Kadar said.  He dropped his sword and slapped both his hands against Altair’s chest as if that alone would undo what he had done.  When it did little (nothing) to stop the flow of blood Kadar cursed again and ducked down to pick him up.  Altair was not light or small but Kadar carried him with no visible effort.  "Malik!“ he screamed when he shouldered his way into their home.

 

"What?” Malik shouted back.  

 

“Malik!” Kadar screamed again.  He laid Altair out on the table in the kitchen as the whites around his eyes started to pink and his mouth was hanging open with a slither of hunger.  His breath was heavy as he stared at the blood on his hands and the stream of it coming from Altair’s wound.  His delicate heart-and-lungs had to smell most delicious at the moment.

 

Malik came into the room with a grumpy pad of his bare feet and cursed in surprise.  He shoved Kadar back even as his brother’s voice broke into a hiss of hunger.  ”Get out,” he said.  Kadar attacked his back and Malik backhanded him away.  Malik’s hand was massive on Kadar’s arm and the red glow of anger that blushed his skin up orange-and-red scorched Kadar’s arm.

 

Altair was shivering even in the heat.  Malik was mumbling under his breath as he retrieved a bowl and a variety of herbs.  Kadar was whimpering and picking at the black-and-blistered skin of his arm as Malik worked.  The younger demon offered his arm without being asked when Malik pulled a knife from a drawer and cut a slice from Kadar’s elbow to his wrist and caught the flow of his blood in the bowl.  

 

“Get out,” Malik said again.  Kadar did not wait to be told to go again but fled.  his wings knocked against the doorway as he rushed out and the sound of his body ripping through the fabric of this reality echoed like a thunder clap.  "You are very near death,“ Malik said to him.  "I will let you die if you prefer it.”

 

Altair felt very pale.  He licked his lips and tried to say he did not want to die.  Thought that if he weren’t such a coward it would have been preferable to the life he led here.  His hand rested against Malik’s arm and even furious with gold-red heat, he could not feel anything but cold.  

 

“Good,” Malik said.  Then he tipped the bowl and poured the thick-paste across the gaping wound on his chest.  The pain was instantaneous.  "This will hurt.“  Altair might have screamed if not for how everything went completely and utterly black.

 

When he woke up, he was in his nest and there was no evidence he had been wounded at all save for the new line of a scar across his chest.  Kadar was sitting at arm’s length away with a repentant look.  ”I was reckless,” Kadar said.  ”I’m sorry.”

 

Altair spread his hand over the scar and looked for any sign of Malik but saw none.  ”Do not be sorry.  I want to do it again.  You will not be so lucky twice.”  

 

Kadar’s smile was sharp-and-pleased.


	10. How to Introduce your pet to Dangerous Predators

Kadar’s friends (who were stupid above all else) had grown fond of commenting over how docile and well-behaved Altair was. They brought him treats in a way that was evidently condescending and insulting to Altair. In return for this show of benevolence, Altair often glared at them. This meager attempt at revolt brought a loud round of applause that grated on Malik’s already sore nerves. 

 

Altair was neither docile (the sheer number of wounds he had inflicted on Kadar since the onset of their ‘playing’ was proof enough for that) or well-behaved (although his acts of defiance were small they were no less heartfelt). It wasn’t that Altair had come by his temperament naturally but that common sense and survival instincts prevailed over pride.

 

When Altair was new to their home (and hateful), he had disregarded the warning to stay in the house (and ignored Malik when he warned him about the hounds). He’d run into the backyard the first chance he had. Malik had watched him from the window in his room. (He hadn’t cared much then, if the little human died or if he lived.) Altair made it a good distance in the greasy black rain even slowed by the slippery puddles as he was. He was near to the line of the skeletal black trees in the distance when he stopped. 

 

Hounds made the instantly recognizable sound of bones knocking together when they walked overlapped with the liquid sound of their broad tongues lapping bloody drool from their massive mouths. The creatures could grow until their shoulders were as high as Altair’s head and the weight of their paws could crush a human with minimal effort. But perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the hounds was the grin of their mouths, the curled edges of their lips that drew back almost so far it seemed as if they could simply split their skulls in half to expose their throats. 

 

They had teeth that were too large for their mouths that rose jagged and pointed (and stained) upward. Their noses were massive, wet holes in their faces that drew in the scent of blood. The slightest hint of something edible made their pupils dilate and then they began to growl. The sound of their growl was lazy. Many humans were lulled into a stupor by the sound of it.

 

Yet, Altair stood face to face with Kadar’s last pet with both of his arms out at his sides and his hands gripping into fists. Malik watched him from a distance, tried to make out how scared he was, to see if he would try to run or stand his ground. The hound would eat him either way. Many humans ran (and the hounds liked to chase things, liked to toy with them before they ate them) but Altair did not. He stared his inevitable death in the face and did not falter.

 

Malik lifted himself up off his bed far enough to blow through the open crack in his window. There would not be enough heat to alert Altair of his intervention (if the human even realized he could produce such heat) but the scent of a stronger predator would send the hound away. It had always been wary of Malik. Even when it was a wrinkled puppy with a constantly wagging tail it had avoided him with all precaution. 

 

The hound turned with a sharp whine and went back into the forest. Altair was still only long enough to be sure he wasn’t going to be eaten if he moved and then he ran back to the house. To his credit, he didn’t collapse until he was inside (under a table, in the kitchen). The event (never spoken of) seemed to have been the sole turning point in Altair’s tolerance of his new home.

 

Malik had seen Altair face certain death without a shiver of fear and that was the reason (he told himself) he had started inviting the pet into his room when he knew Kadar’s stupidest friends were coming. The human had more bravery and pride in his meager limbs than the fool demons Kadar liked had collectively among them. 

 

“What is this?” Altair demanded when he showed the bone he was given. The sound of laughing had followed him down the hall but none of the idiots would dare to come looking for him again so long as Malik was home.

 

“You’re meant to gnaw on it,” Malik said. 

 

Altair frowned at the bone and threw it back up the hallway. Then he flopped down by the door and stared angrily at the wall opposite him. It was an unenviable thing to be: a brave soul in a flimsy human body. Malik wondered what Altair would do if he were capable, wondered at the glorious bloodshed that he would seek for these slights he’d suffered. For now, such things were impossible, and the only solace Malik could offer was his silence and the assurance of a safe place to hide.


	11. When Your Pet is a Surprisingly good Guard Dog

Altair was not often left entirely alone. One or both of the demons were generally either in the home or very near to it. He didn’t flatter himself to think they had any special desire to keep him safe (more than likely they were simply too boring to bother doing anything terribly exciting). However, Kadar made a production out of telling him that both of them would be gone for as long as a full day leaving him unattended.

 

“Would you stop?” Malik demanded when he walked in to find Kadar in the middle of a speech about how much he loved Altair. "You are an embarrassment.“

 

"We’ve never left him alone this long before! Maybe I should get someone to watch him while we’re gone.” This was clearly a thing one did with their pets. Kadar scratched at the scales on the side of his face, those ones that had only just begun to push through his skin while he thought. 

 

Malik cuffed his brother on the back of the head. ”They would eat him and tell you he ran away. If you are worried, leave him one of your toy knives.” The irritation that Malik felt was not (for once) expressed with an increased heat but a flutter of his wings. 

Kadar immediately went to fetch one of the knives and brought it back to give to Altair. ”Its very unlikely that any real demon would come here while we are out. One of the cherubs might—if one of those nasty little fuckers comes in stick this in their head. They rot very quickly so throw the body outside.” Then he cupped his hands around Altair’s face and smiled at him in a loving way that showed off his sharp, pointed teeth. ”I’ll bring you a treat.” Then he nodded and left.

 

Malik bothered to come back and throw a jar of black blood at him. ”The younger demons like to prove they are tough by breaking into my house while I am away. Dip the knife in that and stab them until your arm is tired. They will die in agony. Leave the body for me to see.” He did not touch Altair but cock his head in a way that seemed to say that he wished to say something further and did not. Instead he turned with another aggravated flutter of his wings and stormed out back. 

 

For many hours, nothing at all happened. Altair wandered around the house—ate the charred meat that was left for him in a bowl, played with the chest of toys that Kadar was fond of giving him and went into the storage room to pick through the little odds and ends of the past-and-future. He was sitting in the center of that crowded room pressing numbers on a calculator when he heard the crack of the front door grating across the floor. Neither of the brothers ever entered the home through the front door. It was only the unwanted intrusion of ‘friends’ that ever opened that door.

 

Altair set down the calculator and picked up the sword he’d been given. The jar of blood was next to his knee (he saw no reason to be cautious) and he unscrewed the cap as he listened for any approaching steps. Cherubs (the awful insect demons with the expressionless faces and yawning-wordless mouths) made a rustling sound when they walked. Their many feet brushed the ground as their wings clicked together rhythmically. He would be able to hear such a thing coming.

 

Whatever had entered the house was quiet. It produced no noticeable heat. 

 

Altair could hear it moving things around in the outer room. Heard the footsteps as it came closest to the mouth of the storage hallway. The light was dim in the house but he could make out an outline of jagged horns and massive round shoulders. The demon had no wings. It kicked at Altair’s nest and sneered. 

 

“Come out little pet,” it said as it sniffed at the air. "I promise I won’t hurt you much.“ 

 

There was a laugh somewhere behind the first demon. Altair finished unscrewing the lid and dipped the sword into it. The blood stuck to the blade and did not drip. it gave off steam when exposed to air. He expected an acid smell and there was none. Altair waited until the first demon had gone down the hall toward Kadar’s room and the second was standing over his next sniffing at the pillows and blankets.

 

"Human,” it said. "I haven’t eaten human in months. Come out, come out pet.“ This demon had wings but they were pathetically small to match the high timbre of his cracking voice. It turned with a chuckle toward where the other had gone. Altair ran—as fast as he could—and jumped to give himself extra momentum to drive the blade through the demon’s body. It struck on his bones but sank through with hardly more of a momentary stop. The demon shrieked in outrage as its flesh started to boil around the blade. Altair pulled the sword free and stabbed him again—lower in his flank—and again and again before the first demon reappeared.

 

The demon was not angry but terrified as his friend’s screams curdled in his throat and his melting flesh puddled on the ground in fat drops. The steam did smell awful then, a sharp and stomach turning odor. Altair brought the sword up again as he released his light hold on the screaming demon. It fell and started convulsing on the floor. The first, wingless demon put his hands up in obvious surrender but Altair attacked him anyway. There was not much of the black blood left on the blade but enough that when he slashed it across the retreating demon’s back it left a livid red weal of blisters. 

 

Altair had to push very hard (and for what felt like an eternity) to shut the door the escaping demon had left open. When it was closed, the smell of boiling flesh was so strong that he could not contain the urge to vomit. He held his breath as he collected the jar of black blood and retreated to Malik’s room. The only room in the house that had a window carved into it. He slept in there, curled in the rounded hole in the ground where Malik slept curled up inside of his massive wings. 

 

The sound of his (owners) returning woke him. He took the precaution of wetting his blade with the blood in case there were demons capable of mimicking Kadar’s impressed voice. He crept out to the main room where Kadar was looking at the misshapen body of the dead demon with obvious pride. His grinning was only interrupted when he saw the blade in Altair’s hand. He reacted as the other one had, with both hands up palms-out toward him and instant fear. 

 

"I brought you salad,” Kadar said. "Lots of salad. And dirt to grow more in. You are safe now, put the sword down.“

 

The thought occurred to him (briefly) that he could kill Kadar. It was possible. It might even be deserved. At very least, he should maim the grinning demon for kidnapping him from his home and keeping him as a house pet for his own amusement. Yet, he did not strike. He did not give up his weapon either. Instead, he said, “what is it on this?”

 

"Malik’s blood,” Kadar said softly. "Put it down. I will not leave you again.“ 

 

Altair did not relinquish his sword but took it back to Malik’s room. Malik returned and Altair expected to be punished for his disobedience. Yet, the demon came into the room with his skin glowing as bright as sunlight beneath his scales. The heat that came with him was overwhelming. 

 

"Was he alone?” Malik asked. 

 

“No.” Altair told him of the other and how he had cut him on his back. As he spoke, the flesh behind the scales on Malik’s neck turned blue with a course of white and the heat grew so unbearable that Altair could not speak anymore. Malik did not turn and leave but simply disappear with a sudden drop in temperature so severe the walls were instantly covered in condensation. 

 

Kadar came then, sneaking into his brother’s room and pulling Altair out again. He did not touch the sword or the blood but left both where they had fallen. Kadar stroked his hair and gave him water and put him back in his bed. ”You were very brave. Do not worry, Malik will be sure to remind those who have forgotten they are not allowed here.” He was proud and it was that sound that followed Altair down into sleep.


	12. When your Brother's Pet tries to Seduce you.

Altair was afforded no privacy.  It was not such an offensive concept when he remembered he was nothing but a pet.  The books that Kadar had brought to him (books meant for a child, so far as he could tell) were filled with pictures of children and pets featured happily playing and sleeping and living every second of their lives together.  The more books he was given, the less privacy he was afforded.

He was loved (if one could call the constant nagging attention of an annoying demon love).  Kadar _played_  with him outside in the yard with a variety of weapons.  Malik always took him along on walks around the neighborhood or to the market.  (Following the death of the demon that invaded their home, the atmosphere of the market was exceptionally tolerant and friendly toward Malik.)  Altair was encouraged to take naps.  He was fed regularly.  Kadar insisted on forcing him to bathe frequently.  His hair was combed, his breath was freshened and he hated them more than he had ever hated them before.

 

The few brief moments that he had by himself were spent sleeping and if he managed to be awake for any amount of time before the demon brothers, he was torn between enjoying the solitude quietly and masturbating.  He could not do either so long as the brothers were around.  (Kadar might have been bored to the point of annoying him by the first; Malik might have burned the house down if he witnessed the second.)

 

“Don’t be so grumpy,” Kadar said to him in the morning.  "You have everything a pet could ask for.“

 

Altair hated him more when his hair was still wet and freshly brushed.  Kadar seemed to realize this and promptly excused himself to go steal more things from the surface world.  Malik was outside either stretching his enormous wings or sanding his claws down to a manageable length.  When Altair found him, he was picking ash out from the joints in his wings.  

 

Altair made a study of Malik’s reactions to him.  He memorized the different levels of his blush and the intense way the demon followed his every move with his eyes.  While he thought Malik was possibly a perfect male specimen (and he was, _perfectly_  built), any attraction he felt toward the man was cooled somewhat by the fact that there was a collar around his neck and Altair was the property of this demon’s kid brother.  However, Malik’s increasing physical attraction to him had secured him enough favor to give him a means to protect himself against invaders.  And if what he’d heard from the market was true, Malik was fond enough of him to have _incinerated_  the demon that invaded their home.  ( _A grease stain was all that was left of him_ , was how he overheard it.)

 

Aligning himself with the most powerful of possible allies seemed like the most intelligent course of action.  The fact that he had come to look forward to inciting that glow of heat on Malik’s face was a footnote.  One of the things he had discovered pleased the demon (most of all) was a fine layer of sweat on Altair’s skin.  Either the smell or sight of it had an instantly arousing effect on Malik.  

 

That was why Altair had taken up running around the yard.  It was why he’d resumed the exercises that he’d simply quit doing upon realizing his fate was irreversible and a brief depression robbed him of interest.  

 

"You are far more clever than my brother realizes,” Malik said.  He had stopped what he was doing to watch Altair without any sense of shame.  "You forget that you are to me what an animal is to you.“

 

Altair was _coated_  in sweat when he stopped in front of Malik.  The differences in their height was only obnoxious when it made him feel small but he suspected that Malik enjoyed his superior height.  The way his wings curved forward around his body to shield Altair suggested he very much appreciated being the larger of them.  Altair smirked (but did not smile) at him.  "Am I an animal to you?”

 

Malik was staring at his mouth (as he often did) as his fingers twitched in the air between them.  His eyes were still a neutral brown but the blush that settled on his cheeks had spread like a rash down his neck and onto his shoulders.  "Altair,“ he said with the utmost patience imaginable.

 

It was sheer recklessness that made Altair kiss him.  A sudden inspired realization that this demon was _weak_  against him.  (The fact that he’d thought about it for weeks was also a factor.)  He did not put his hands against Malik’s skin but balanced his weight in such a way that allowed him to press their mouths together.  Malik’s mouth was hot-like-boiling, an instant heat that nearly made him fall backward.  Then there was a hand curved around his shoulder to hold him in place.  Malik’s tongue was slick and _hot_  as it licked inside of his mouth.

 

Malik pushed him back in the next instant with a sneer caught on his lips.  The lingering taste of his tongue was like ash in Altair’s mouth but it was hardly worthy of note compared to the shiny-red-and-blistered skin of his shoulder.  The outline of Malik’s hand was easy to make out.  "I have not pursued this for many reasons.”  But he wanted to and that was all that mattered.  "Humans break and burn with ease.“

 

"Then make me unbreakable,” Altair said.  Even if the pain in his shoulder was a searing throb of pain, he did not spare a moment to acknowledge it or look away from Malik’s face.  "There must be a way.“

 

Malik’s blush was vivid along his cheeks.  His smile was _prideful_  as he touched the tip of the claw on his thumb against the center of Altair’s lips.  "Very clever,” he repeated.  "Kadar will not like if I take his pet from him.“

 

"Then perhaps I should turn my attention to him.  He does not burn me when I touch him.”  There was a piercing pain in his lip when Malik’s claw pinched into his skin and drew blood.  He didn’t flinch as Malik sneered again at the thought.

 

“You should not test his resolve.  He has only just barely managed to keep from eating you.  I made you unpalatable for him or he might have.”  Malik licked Altair’s blood off his thumb and his wings folded up behind his back with a snap of leather skin.  "I will make you unbreakable but you will belong to me.  I will not share you.  What you ask is a long, tedious process and I will expect full, willing compensation for my kindness.“  

 

"You will have it,” Altair said.  Oh-and-Malik’s skin flushed oh-so- _red_.


	13. Talking to your Pet about Bad Choices

Kadar was inexhaustible. This was one of the many things that Altair had come to know about his owner. While Malik was sexually attracted to Altair’s sweat, Kadar had come to believe that it was his solemn duty as Altair’s owner to force him to exercise to the point of collapse. In the immediate aftermath of Altair’s (successful) attempts to seduce Malik, Kadar had been even more inspired to exercise him.

 

So much so that he took Altair out to a large empty stretch of ashy rock and broken glassy bits that looked similar to what their home was made of. Once there he stretched his wings out and dropped the leash. ”Run,” Kadar said. His eyes were blindingly blue as he said it. The edges of his smile where his cheeks had thinned in preparation to split when he molted again made his smile seem to stretch eerily upward toward his ears. 

 

“I do not like being chased,” Altair said.

 

Kadar’s teeth were viciously sharp when he said, “then consider it a race.” He gave Altair no more than a half second to comply with his command before he jumped into the air. The air displaced by his wings knocked the loose debris into Altair’s path no matter where he ran. 

 

It was a pointless exercise. There was nowhere to hide from Kadar. There was no way to outrun the demon. Still, he ran until his legs were weak and Kadar was sufficiently amused. He dropped to the ground—bare feet against broken rocks—and steadied Altair’s wobbling body with two hands on his shoulders. One of his hands dug into the recently blistered skin hard enough to make the still-healing burn ache even through the general exhaustion in his body. ”Poor thing,” he said with no pity. ”Rest.” It was not a command that Altair could refuse. Kadar sat with his wings stretched out behind him and pulled Altair down. 

 

“Get off,” Altair said. He shoved at the hands pulling him so his head rested on Kadar’s lap. But his mortal arms were weak and Kadar’s resolve was strong. He could not wiggle free and all his attempts did little but scratch his skin with the many rocks on the ground. "What was the point in this?“ he asked when he could not fight any more.

 

Kadar’s fingers ended in sharp nails that were not comforting as they stroked through his hair. ”Your mouth was burned. I know what you are doing with my brother.” That made Altair’s heart pound. ”No, shhh. I did not bring you here to hurt you. I can get another pet if I want, you have only one soul to sacrifice. Look at this place.” Kadar looked away from his face, up at the flat nothing all around them. ”It was a city once. You have been to the market. Imagine such a place but ten times over. There were hundreds of demons here—perhaps thousands. They had built homes and markets and managed to make a grassland where they could raise cows. Imagine, cows here. I saw it when I was very young.”

 

Altair did not look around but closed his eyes. Kadar’s hand was against his chest—warm but not painful—as his fingers stroked through Altair’s hair. The immediate danger of it did not completely outweigh the soothing cadence of his touches. ”What happened?”

 

"Malik happened,” Kadar said softly. "Chaos demons are rare and immortal. Mother said they came from the very center of the earth long before the surface world grew life. She told me that when she found Malik he was still a small boy, curled up like a rock. She lit a fire and put him in it and he came back to life. Chaos demons are pure fire, Altair. They are capable of immense destruction. Many of them are extinguished now, just piles of ash and stone.“

 

There had to be a point. Altair tried to open his eyes but the lull of Kadar’s voice made staying awake difficult. ”Why’d he do this?”

 

"He was angry. That was hundreds of years ago. He was smaller than you when he did it. Someone tried to take his favorite toy. It was a flute, I think. They pulled it out of his hand and taunted him and this is what happened.” Kadar’s hand stopped stroking his hair. "My Mother is dead now. I am my brother’s guardian.“

 

Altair managed to force his eyes open. ”Your warning comes too late.”

 

Kadar looked sad. He sighed and nodded. ”Sleep then. It is a long walk home again.”


	14. Chapter 14

Malik (being somewhat older and wiser) was aware the very moment Kadar realized what had happened.  It was obvious, first off, what with Altair’s burnt lips and blistered skin.  The only thing that surprised him was that Kadar did not immediately start flapping around the house shrieking in outrage that his pet had been stolen from him after he’d put in so much work.  Malik had half-expected that Kadar would try to eat Altair simply because he was so fundamentally against sharing.  (Malik had changed the way Altair’s flesh tasted with an easy spell and liberal application of Kadar’s own blood.  Blood demons would eat almost anything except other demons.)  

 

Clearly, Malik was not expecting the perfectly rational way Kadar found him days and days later.  Kadar said: “you will need my blood if you intend to turn him.”

 

This was not exactly a revelation.  Malik had started collecting the odds and ends he would need to begin and continue the spell that would change Altair quite a while ago.  There were older demons he might have gone to for blood–the older the demon the stronger the blood–but the convenience of having a blood demon as a brother was simply too good to pass up.  Altair’s strength would have to come from himself and not the blood used to turn him.  "Is that an offer or a denial?“

 

"I will give it,” Kadar said.  "You cannot know what he will become.  You are risking many lives to satisfy a base desire that will not last.“

 

Malik rolled his eyes.  "Mother did not know what you would become.  It is dangerous to change children, they are unpredictable.  Yet she turned you into a demon to satisfy her yearning.”

 

Kadar frowned again.  "You are stealing my pet.“  That seemed more like him to be upset about.

 

"Get another,” Malik said.  He did not mean it.  Kadar had not immediately gone to fetch himself another human.  There was no reason at all to think that he would.  Altair’s arrival had been an aberration in the pattern of their lives.  Kadar liked non-physical things and food.  

 

Then Kadar returned from an excursion to the surface world with his arms tight around the struggling mass of another human male.  This one screaming in outrage at having been taken as it was dropped on the ground.  Kadar was grinning with bloody teeth down at the man.  Altair (who had not been sleeping but lounging in an intentionally provocative manner) was on his feet in an instant.  

 

“What are you?” the new human demanded.  He was on his feet (and his striking resemblance to Altair was somewhat discomforting) with both of his hands out as if he could ward off Kadar with that and nothing more.  He had not yet seen Malik or his panic might have increased.

 

Kadar said, “his name is Desmond.  He interrupted my dinner.”

 

Altair frowned at Kadar for the statement then looked at Desmond with a curious tilt of his head.  He took a step forward and Desmond took a step back.  And again and again until Desmond was pressed against a wall with one hand flat to it and the other held out to ward off any attempts to approach him.  "You have brought a coward to our home,“ Altair said.

 

"You’re human,” Desmond said to Altair.  He looked at the collar on Altair’s neck.  "What?“

 

Malik moved forward in the hall that led to the kitchen just far enough to be seen.  Desmond looked at him (not Altair) and screamed.  He concentrated only a little to heat his flesh beneath the scales on his shoulders as Altair looked at him with a grin that grew steadily more pleased-and-arrogant.  "We must talk about your selection criteria for new pets,” he said to Kadar.

 

“Pets?” Desmond repeated.  

 

Altair slapped Desmond’s hand when it tried to push him back.  He pulled at his jacket.  He followed Desmond when the man tried to move away.  Again and again he followed him while Kadar looked on indulgently.  

 

“Altair will show him what to do.”

 

Altair had no such intention.  Altair was prodding Desmond to see what he would do, poking and pulling at him until he finally prompted the man to hit him.  Desmond was frightened and lashing out.  Altair was neither thing.

 

“Hey!” Kadar shouted.  "No fighting.“  He pulled Desmond away from Altair and shooed Altair toward Malik wordlessly.  

 

Malik took Altair outside.  "You feel no compassion for the human?”

 

“I feel no compassion for cowards,” Altair said.  "Kadar will eat this one, I think.  There is nobody here to protect him.“  They did not speak of it again as they cleared the yard of debris.  Before Kadar went to bed he was sure to warn his two pets to play nicely together.  

 

Desmond already had a collar and a grim frown on his face as he tried to be very small.  Altair was purposefully, aggressively lounging in his nest with no intention of extending any sort of kindness toward the newcomer.  Kadar must have realized this because he dragged one of the cushions out of the nest to give to Desmond.  

 

In the morning, Altair had taken back the cushion and was wearing Desmond’s jacket.  There was a bruise on Desmond’s face and a clever-and-pleased smile on Altair’s.  Malik regarded the display of territorial aggression and weighed his amusement at Altair’s pointless meanness against Kadar’s almost certain disappointment that his pets did not like one another.

 

"Give it back,” Malik said.

 

Altair had no intention of obeying him.  That was evident just from the sideways glance he spared Malik.  But he made a show of getting to his feet and pulling the jacket off.  He bunched it up in his hands and considered his options before turning abruptly and shoving the bundled cloth against Malik’s skin.  The motion was so fluid that Malik did not have time to process it before Altair was kissing him again.  The merest brush of his cool lips and the scent of his still-human breath ran through him like a shock.  His hands clenched in denied arousal like _anger._

Malik did not have to push Altair away, he slid back in just a second and lifted the scorched remains of the jacket with a pleased grin.  There was nothing but a single sleeve and a still burning section when he threw it at Desmond.  "Kadar has given up ownership of you,“ Malik said.  He did not grab Altair because he did not trust himself not to boil his flesh from his bones.  "You are mine.  You will not hurt my brother or what belongs to him.”

 

“Very well,” Altair said.  But even that he did not truly mean.  


	15. How to get your Pets to like one another

Desmond’s existence persisted despite Altair’s attempts to make him more appetizing for Kadar.  The one time he had managed to cut Desmond (while _playing_  with swords in the back yard), Kadar’s pupils had dilated and his snake-like hiss of hunger had shook out of his throat and through his gritted sharp teeth.  Desmond was smart enough to be scared for his life.

 

Kadar had looked at _him_  (Altair), not at Desmond.  Then he spread his wings and disappeared with a sharp (reproachful) snap.  Without an owner to mediate, Desmond had glared at him and thrown his sword at the greasy ground.  

 

“What is your problem?” Desmond demanded.  He must have had the mistaken impression that he was safe from Altair’s petty wrath.  "You’re human!  Maybe we should be concentrating on how to get away.“

Altair did not feel human (not nearly as much as he once had).  The frail, breakable limitations of his body were an annoyance he did not want to suffer with.  The insides of his head and chest did not feel the way they had when he had come to this place.  He felt coarse and resistant.  ”There is no escape.  Put that out of your head now.”

 

"Why is there no escape?  Because you’ll drag me back?  For what?  One of them eats people!  The other one is—is—”

 

Malik.  Altair flexed his grip on the sword in his hand.  It wouldn’t be difficult at all to kill Desmond.  There was nobody to see him do it and by the time anyone happened across his corpse, someone (demon or hound) would have nibbled away any evidence.  The thought was so loud in his head that he could hardly hear around it.

 

“Why are you out here?” Malik demanded.  He came from behind Altair (from the house) and grabbed the sword from his hand.  Altair did not fight him, did not protest but turned around and went back toward the door.  "Get in the house,“ Malik said to Desmond.  

 

When they were all inside and Altair was laying comfortably in his nest, Malik came to stand at the edge of it and look down at him with obvious disapproval.  ”Where is my brother?”

 

"He had a sudden craving that he had to attend to.”  

 

It did not take a genius to correctly deduce Altair’s meaning.  Malik growled and the red under his scales bloomed up in hectic spots.  Steam rose from his shoulders before he said (through gritted teeth), “outside, Altair.”  It was clear from the severity of his expression that if he was not immediately obeyed he would make Altair follow his commands.  (While Altair was reasonably good at tolerating pain, having his flesh baked from his bones was a bit more than even could manage to withstand.)  

 

Altair got to his feet and went past Malik out to the yard again.  The gathering darkness in the sky meant it would pour the greasy-black-rain before long.  He could only barely hear Malik telling Desmond that he could sleep in the nest.  Altair picked up the sword the idiot had thrown and clenched it in his fist (uselessly) while he waited.

 

“You arrogance does not amuse me,” Malik said when he came out.  The veins in his wings were highlighted in red (something that Altair had not seen before).  There was a deep blush on his face that was different from the rage that was generating dire heat from under his scales.  

 

“Does it arouse you?” Altair asked.  

 

“It _offends_  me.”  No it didn’t.  Or if it did, that was not the sole feeling that it inspired.  Malik was glaring at him, the blunted ends of his claws digging into his large palms as a shiver of intense irritation went through his whole body.  His wings flinched behind him as Altair looked from his face to his crotch.  Offense was not Malik’s primary problem.  ”Understand, _boy_  that you are only as safe as you are tolerable.  When you do not obey me—regardless of my attraction to you—I will _not_  protect you.  The demons that live here will make sausage of you.”

 

"Kadar deserves a better pet,” Altair said.

 

Malik snarled.  He looked as if he were going to hit Altair for a moment and only a monumental effort on his part stayed his hand.  It was a benefit (as well as a curse) that Malik could not so much as touch him without burning him now.  ”What reason do you have to think Desmond is not good enough for my brother?”

 

“He is weak.  He does not fight.”  

 

“Ah yes, you have seen this with your eyes that see everything.”  Malik let a breath out through his nose and it rose like smoke into the air.  " _Obey_ me.  If Desmond is not worthy of Kadar, find a way to make him worthy.”

 

“What is my reward for obedience?” Altair demanded.  "What do I get but an unwanted burden?“

 

Malik grabbed his wrist then, the instant boil of his hand rolling up Altair’s arm with a shivering scream he could not contain.  The pain was _immense_.  Malik pulled him closer and pressed his finger against Altair’s chest and began to drag it across his skin leaving a red burn where he touched.  

 

"Malik,” Altair gasped between breaths.  He could not fight for his freedom but beg for it with his voice in a long-shaking-cry of pain.  "Malik, please, Malik let me go, Malik I’ll—"

 

Then, just before the world went nearly black, the pain ceased.  There was no more heat or pain but the peaceful lack of painful stimuli.  Malik was still frowning (grimly) with his cheeks a highlight of orange-and-red.  Anger should have made him intolerably hot but Altair could not feel it.  Malik’s arm went around his back then and pulled him up and close to his body.  The width of his chest was solid as stone the way his wet mouth pressed over Altair’s was absolute.  His tongue—slick and long and strange—was pressing into Altair’s mouth.  One of his thighs pressed up between Altair’s as his hand grabbed him by the hip and held him in place so that Malik could grind against him through their clothes.  Altair kissed him back, dug his fingernails into the thick-glassy-scales on Malik’s shoulders, on the sides of his face.  The back of his knuckles touched the glowing red ridges of Malik’s horns and they were dusty with ash.  

 

It was a glorious-forbidden- _pleasure_  and Altair wanted it more than he considered possible.  Malik shoved him away abruptly just seconds before the searing-white-pain returned.  ”Do yourself a favor and pass out,” Malik said.

 

Altair woke up on the table with bandages pressed over his wounds.  The smell of Kadar’s potent blood made the kitchen stagnant.  He rolled his head looking for anyone else and found himself completely alone.  A small noise from the doorway made him arch his back and tip his head to look toward the outer room.  Desmond was there looking sheepish and small.  

 

“The angry one said you couldn’t move." 

 

Altair looked at his left wrist where Malik’s hand had held him in place and wondered at how it did not hurt.  The thick layer of blood-soaked bandages suggested that it was not fully healed yet.  A wound like that must require a greater amount of time to fix itself.  ”Do not try to run,” Altair said.  He ran his tongue across his lips and found them painfully dry.  ”There are things here that will eat you.  Kadar will not waste his time saving a thankless pet.”


	16. When Strangers creep on your Pet

Altair got a new collar that seemed to signify to everyone that saw it that ownership of him had passed from Kadar (relatively friendly and likable) to Malik (who was respected, feared and generally treated nicely). The many sneers and obvious-hungry-lip-licking that had followed him through the market on previous trips was abruptly replaced with quick-side-glances to avoid looking directly at him. It was a development that did not bother him in the slightest.

Desmond, however, was now Kadar’s only pet and he was therefore subjected to all the same treatment that Altair had only narrowly escaped. It was not Altair being dragged out of his bed to be exercised and groomed but Desmond. When disturbed from his sleep, Altair only picked up his blanket and went to lay in Malik’s room. The heat made the still-tender blackened ring around his left wrist tingle but it was not an unbearable sensation. 

 

In place of being treated like a dog, Altair was given a series of the foulest things he had ever been asked to drink. They seemed to be made predominantly out of Kadar’s blood with bits of floating herbs that looked like dirt and felt like sand in his throat. Malik stood next to him every morning with his fingers on the bottom of the glass to keep the contents warm and to make sure it was all consumed. When the thick-and-gritty blood was washing around in Altair’s belly his new owner burnt sigils into his chest. The marks faded as the day dragged on so that his skin was fresh and ready to be burnt again by morning.

 

“How long will this go on?” Altair asked after ten-twelve-thirteen such days had passed. 

 

“There is no way to know,” Malik said. "It depends on what manner of demon you become. It depends on how important your soul is to you. Imagine you were two, instead of one. Every part of you that is human is being torn away and whatever remains is what will grow into a demon.“

 

That was not much of a comfort. Altair considered the information as Malik looked at the burns on his skin with a delicious-distracting blush on his cheeks. "I was not a very good human.”

 

“You are stubborn,” Malik said. "You cannot expect that simply because you wish discard part of yourself that it will give with any ease. This process cannot be rushed. My Mother fed Kadar her blood for months before he turned.“

 

That was also not comforting. The unhappiness of the unknown time line followed Altair throughout his day. While his owner (to whom Altair had promised obedience) had prohibited him from being mean to Desmond, he had not prohibited ignoring Desmond and allowing him to fall victim to his own stupidity. 

 

Such as Desmond’s attempt to escape when both of the brothers were gone. He packed a small sack of meat and went out through the back door. Altair stood in the kitchen and watched Desmond stomping toward his death for as long as a full minute. He considered allowing the man to walk straight to his own death–if not by hound than by demon–and the blackened ring on his wrist pulsed in reminder of Malik’s anger. 

 

Altair found his sword and dug around in his nest for the vial of Malik’s blood he had been given in place of the larger jar of it. He tucked the vial into his pocket and held the sword in one fist as he ran after Desmond. 

 

"Go away,” Desmond shouted at him when Altair found him out in the skeletal trees. "I’m done! I don’t want to be fed, I don’t want to be brushed. I don’t want to be petted. I’d rather die out here than in there!“

 

That was increasingly likely as Desmond continued shoving through the snapping underbrush of the forest toward the unmistakable smell of the hounds. Altair said, "I cannot let you go.”

 

“Because your master wouldn’t like it?” Desmond shouted at him. "I don’t know what kind of shit you were into when you weren’t in hell but this isn’t me! This is a collar.“ Desmond yanked at the collar around his neck as if he could remove it (but he couldn’t, Altair had tried every method available). "I’m not a dog.”

 

“I will not let you go,” Altair said. He grabbed Desmond by the arm with the intent of pulling him all the way back to the house. It would not have been an easy task with the way anger and embarrassment made Desmond impatient for his own freedom but it was still doable. 

 

The snap of approaching feet made Altair pause. He looked around for the hound that he assumed had found them (a fearsome, towering monster) and did not see one. In place of a beast, he saw the fat demon from the market. The one with the greasy hair and the lazy lips that infuriated Malik on sight. 

 

“What is this?” Abbas said. He walked toward them as Desmond went frightfully still. "A pair of lost pets. How unfortunate that you have slipped away from your owners. Who knows what could happen to you out here.“

 

Altair slid his body between the fat demon and Desmond. He held the sword up and Abbas laughed at him for his effort. 

 

"I have watched you. It is a shame that you have fallen into such bad luck, Altair. That is what you are called isn’t it? I’ve heard Kadar talk about you. He is a child, you know. He has not yet fully realized the depth of the hungers our kind have. That must be why he has left you alone for so long. That must be why he allowed his brother to take you away. Malik does not deserve such a treasure. He cannot enjoy you as you are meant to be enjoyed.”

 

“You may not eat or fuck me,” Altair said.

 

“Can’t I?” Abbas asked. He looked around them and then up toward the sky. "Malik is not here at present. I may do whatever I please.“ 

 

Altair shoved his hand into pocket and pulled the vial out as he said, "run back to the house, Desmond. Don’t stop.” And he smashed the little glass container over the blade in his hand. The impact shattered the glass and freed the blood that spread over the steel with a long hiss and a slow-rising curl of steam. 

 

Abbas reacted as if he had been assaulted, with an instant paralyzing fear. He jumped out of the way when Altair swung the sword and turned with a mad flap of his wings to push himself through the trees. 

 

Desmond was running-running as fast as he could toward the home. Altair ran after him (listening all the while for the sound of Abbas trying again) and the two of them fell through the door. Altair’s sword clattered to the ground as he kicked the door shut and the quiet of the home settled over their excited breaths like a blanket. 

 

“What was he saying?” Desmond asked. "Did they fuck you?“

 

Altair flopped back on the floor with his heart thundering in his chest. The coarse inside of his body was twisting and a sharp pain stabbed through his eyes. His fingers felt as if they were tangled up in something he couldn’t (yet) see. "No,” he said.

 

Desmond collapsed next to him. His rapid breath slowed with obvious effort. "But you want him to?“

 

Altair opened his eyes, squinted at Desmond through the pain and wondered at the halo of golden light around him. At how a string of it seemed to be wrapped all around Altair’s fingers. A strange sensation of tolerance and protective empathy overcame him. "Yes,” Altair said. He touched Desmond’s body to be sure it was real. "Do not try to run again. What waits for you out there is far worse than what you will find here.“


	17. Malik has Feelings

Malik left because he did not trust himself to maintain a reasonable state of indifference about the happenings at his home.  The nature of a chaos demon lent itself to chaos (and to destruction).  Most (nearly all) of his kind had extinguished themselves with violent eruptions. Hell (as Altair had taken up calling it, and why not there was no better words for his home) was pocked with the scorch marks of fire-and-chaos demons that could not control themselves.  The bodies of the demons who caused such awful destruction remained as statues to commemorate their achievements.  The young demons (still full of pride and curiosity) had taken to prodding the bodies of these demons to prove their worth and fearlessness.  Chaos demons could not die but they could fall into stasis and remain there indefinitely until someone happened close enough to create a spark to ignite them again.   

 

For years(and years, and years, and years) Malik had maintained neutrality.  In doing so, he’d found a peace and stability that was notoriously lacking from his kind. Kadar’s decision to bring home a pet had been a catalyst in robbing Malik of the security of nothing. Altair’s rude interjection into his life had caused nothing but disruption.  The decision to change the human into a demon—as Kadar pointed out, a rather stupid decision—was based on nothing but Malik’s long-ago-smothered desire to have some manner of meaningful contact with a comparable body.  

Altair was not made to withstand the sort of thing Malik was.  Even if he were successfully turned to a demon, there was no proof that whatever Altair became would be sturdy enough to survive long-term exposure to Malik. (Yet, there was no human he had met that would willingly drink a blood demon’s repulsive blood every day sprinkled with the bone dust plucked from the graveyard of ancient demons.  No human that stood so willingly to have his flesh seared day-after-day.)  There was only the hope that Altair’s innate nature (killing others of his kind) and stubborn resistance would prove to be useful in his transformation.  

Malik left because he was angry and horny and lonely. He went out to the fields that had been levelled by others of his kind and burnt the greasy dirt with reckless abandon he was only capable of when there was nobody else to consider.  When he was exhausted and the broiling rage that made his skin glow had been effectively dampened, he went home again.

He expected to walk into a mess of some kind. Altair’s reluctant obedience often involved allowing Desmond to do stupid things.  Often, Malik returned to find Desmond had gotten himself into mischief and Kadar was upset by how his collection of useless things had been disturbed by his pet.  Altair just lounged and watched and did not care.  

This day, however, he walked into chaos.  (It was saying something when there was chaos enough to impress him.)  The floor of the main room had been covered with plastic (again) and Desmond was pacing back and forth on it with anxious questions and unresolved panic.  

Kadar was _screaming_ , a violent, constant, pitiful shriek of noise that rose and fell like serrated saws in the air.  It was a sound that Malik had not heard in decades, the sound that followed their mother’s death and Malik’s first failed attempts to care for Kadar during his evolutions.  Blood demons were attracted to loyalty and comforted by familiarity.  (It was most likely why Kadar was so fond of pets to begin with.)  Mother’s death had robbed him of security for years.  

But Altair was standing in the distance between Kadar’s spread-open, quivering bloody wings and the doorway.  He was standing with his right hand digging gouges into his left hand, picking at the already bloodied skin between his fingers and over the rise of his knuckles.  His eyes—always brown and bright—were gleaming nearly golden as he watched the blood drying on Kadar’s body.  The ooze of it caking up on Kadar’s cheeks as he bent forward in agony.

This evolution was more significant that the relatively simple one before.  The widening of Kadar’s jaw and the new teeth he’d grown were hardly worth note.  This evolution was spreading Kadar’s ribs to give the bones room to grow bigger, stretching his spine and beginning the long process of growing a tail.  His wings would grow and his skin would split and thicken.  

Malik turned back into the kitchen to grab one of the larger buckets, filled it with water and brought it back to dump over Kadar’s head. The water streamed thick-and-dark with blood.  The effect brought barely a moment’s peace to his brother before the screaming resumed with a wet-spray of spit.  The blood that had been oozing out of Kadar’s pores had thickened and gone sticky.  It would require scrubbing before it would bleed freely again.  Even his eyes were swollen nearly shut.  

“Altair!” Malik shouted.  

Altair looked at him as if he only just realized something was happening.  The surprise on his face was monumental but the golden-glint of his eyes (shiny-and-reflective) was a far more interesting development than his sudden ignorant deafness. Altair moved immediately, dragging Desmond into the kitchen and banging about to get the buckets and water.  They returned and began pouring water over Kadar. The heat of his skin was not helped by the coolness of the water so long as the blood stayed caked on him.  

“We have to clean him,” Malik said.

Altair brought scrubbing brushes and the three of them set to work cleaning Kadar.  It took hours to clear away the old scabs and thickened congealing blood. By the time they had finished, Desmond collapsed out of weariness and Kadar was sagging (silent at last). Malik poured more water over him to rinse away the fresh seep of blood.  

“I have been eating too many humans,” Kadar said with a hoarse whisper.  

Malik might have warned his brother (again) about the price of gluttony and how evolutions were often tied directly to a rich diet but his words were interrupted.  Altair had been standing in front of Kadar, watching his face for nearly a full minute. That manic brightness of his eyes had focused entirely on Kadar’s face.  The weep of his blood out of his eyes made a thick stain down his face that dripped off his jaw.  Altair leaned forward and spread his hand across Kadar’s face, mouth open and head tipped so he could drag his human-pink tongue up the thick line of blood toward Kadar’s eye.  

The sound Altair made at the taste of blood was so raw and instinctual that even Kadar (who was repulsed at being tasted in such a manner) could not help but shiver.  Fear was largely a human emotion but even demons were capable of understanding when their lives were at risk.  Kadar’s entire body stiffened as he whispered, “ _Malik_.”  

Altair tipped his head to the opposite side and raked his teeth down the sticky trail of blood on Kadar’s face.  

Kadar did not stay still long enough to ponder what it could mean but kicked Altair away from him before snapping his wings shut with a damp flap and darting to hide behind Malik.  “Kill it!” Kadar hissed.  “I told you not to change him.  Kill it before it matures!”

Altair had fallen into the bloody water that covered the floor but it did not seem to bother him.  He got to his feet with the utmost of patience and tried to peer around Malik toward Kadar who was cringing at his back.  (Blood demons were far from the most sturdy sort of demon.)  Altair was lapping at his lips as he stared at Malik’s brother.  

“You made a monster!” Kadar shouted (in a squeaking, shrill voice).  

Malik lifted the bucket he still held, tested the weight of it and then bashed it over Altair’s head.  He fell again, landed in the water with a fantastic splash and stayed there—still and pale and not at all dangerous—as Malik turned back to look at his brother.  “Only a small one.  I must go get a chain.  Stay here.”

“You cannot leave me with him.”

Malik rolled his eyes.  “You are his mother’s milk, Kadar.  He will not harm you unless you find being licked unpleasant.  Even if he tried to inflict any damage, his teeth are not strong or sharp enough to bite you yet.”

This logic failed to impress his brother who sneered openly at Altair’s body lying in the water.  There was a small (but narrow and unthinkable) risk that Kadar would kill the man while Malik was gone.  It was an acceptable risk (as narrow as it was) so Malik left him to go and fetch a chain. When he got home, Kadar had prodded Desmond awake and set him on the task of pouring water over him.  Altair was still unconscious on the floor.

Malik dragged his pet into his room and secured him to the chain.  It was important to keep Altair from Kadar (who was young enough to still worry about the horror stories he had heard as a child).  Altair was still part a human and a long way until he would be sturdy enough to defend himself from anyone (much less a frantic blood demon).  

When Malik returned to the outer room, Desmond was sleeping again and Kadar was frowning hatefully at Malik.  “That is a monster,” he said, “a cannibal, a _soul-eater_!  That is what you have made.”

“Did you expect different?  What was he doing when you found him?  A human that has such little regard for human life cannot be made into a demon that respects demon life.”  It fit nicely with Malik’s wants to have Altair develop into such a loathsome creature.  Aura demons could not evolve without consuming the flesh of other demons.  While this (alone, despite their many other unusual and unbeloved abilities and habits) made them unpopular with other demons it also made them especially sturdy.  Evolution required aura demons to be stronger and faster than their prey.  “He will not harm you.  We will teach him.”

“Ha,” Kadar said.  But he was too exhausted to fight.  He sat on his stool and was quiet while Malik poured water over him.


	18. Buying the Right Chain

Altair woke up with a damp pain on the side of his head.  It felt crusted and tight when he scrubbed his fingers across the area.  It was hard to concentrate on the pain (even when it was sharp as the smear of blood on his fingertips) because there were golden strings tangled up around his fingers that pulled and itched whenever he moved them.  He rolled onto his belly without taking a second to wonder why he wasn’t in his bed and looked across the floor at the livid prints of bare feet set apart from the shadows by a garish red light.  Everything was a hazy-gray color save for that awful red light.

 

But it was the smell of _blood_  that pulled him to his feet.

 

The sound of talking in the outer rooms was dim against the sudden rush of his pulse pounding in his throat and through his ears.  Altair was on his feet and rushing toward the door.  The metallic scrape of something heavy seemed insignificant.  As did the odd heaviness in his collar that he had only a spare second to acknowledge before his forward motion was abruptly halted.  He was yanked back by the neck with a snap of chain links being pulled tight.  The sudden halt threw him off his balance so that he fell backward and landed on his back.  

 

His vision went black and then starry and when it returned everything was normal colored again.  There were no bright red footsteps of golden strings but the familiar dull glow of the volcanic rock the home was carved from.  The stone was smoother in Malik’s room where the heat was (almost) unbearable whenever the demon slept.  Altair grabbed at his collar and found the chain attached to a large metal ring that had not been there before.  He yanked at the chain (stupidly) and did little but pull his own neck in a painful wrench.  

 

“Malik!” he shouted.  On his feet again, he could see the chain slithering across the floor like a snake.  The length of it was hardly enough to allow him access to the door way and certainly not enough to give him any sense of freedom.  The insult of it was unthinkable.  He beat the chain against the ground as he shouted.  "Malik!“  He could feel the grooves in the metal and when he looked he thought he recognized some of the common sigils that Malik used in his spell work.  

 

"It was for your own good,” Malik said.  He was in the doorway with the stink of blood all over him.  His feet were wet from the water he had to still be spilling all over his brother.  But in his hand there was a tall glass of delicious-red-blood corrupted only with whatever additives he mixed in.  "If you tried to eat my brother I would have had to kill you.“

 

"You have me _chained_ ,” Altair snapped.  But he wanted the blood more than he wanted vengeance (at least for the moment).  He grabbed for it and Malik held it over his head (easily out of reach).  ”I will not beg.”

 

Malik laughed at that.  ”Soon, you will do whatever I ask.  The hunger will be unbearable, Altair.  You are still human now.  But your soul is weak and thin.”

 

"Give me the blood,” Altair said.  "Take this chain off me.“

 

"I will give you the blood.  I will not remove the chain.”  He lowered the glass and held it where Altair could get it.  His finger across the bottom kept the blood warm (deliciously warm) as Altair greedily gulped it.  When it was gone, Altair was licking the rim of the cup as Malik burn the spells into his skin.  

 

Rationality did not return.  Altair was not possessed of sudden humility for what he had done.  He was not sorry.  He was not understanding.  He wrapped the chain around his fist and beat it against the ground as Malik went to attend to his brother.  ”I am not an animal!  Let me go!” he shouted down the hallway.  ”Malik!”  

 

His strength failed him eventually and he sat with his back to the wall and the chain lying across his lap.  The creeping gray shadows filled his vision and the itching-golden-strings wrapped around his fingers again.  He scratched-and-scratched at them but they did not waver.  He could not remove them but was left to suffer with the constant itch of them.  

 

“Malik!” he shouted again.  His head felt too large for his shoulders, his body too small to contain him.  "What’s happening?“  That was a gasped whisper.  Something that could hardly be heard in the room he where he sat and most definitely not out in the other room where the sound of water splashing was deafening.  "Malik,” he said again.  

 

The strings on his fingers jostled and moved.  A golden light filled the hallway as footsteps slapped against the floor toward him.  Malik was there in a halo of light so bright it was nearly unbearable.  His whole body covered in a mass of golden twine that shifted around him in loops and long-lazy strings dangling away from his arms and back.  Long loops of the twine seemed to hang off his horns and get caught on the pointed tips of his ears.  His eyes were intense and dark set into the center of so much light.  Altair was squinting at him, trying to touch the twine and finding nothing but heated space where his fingers grasped for it.

 

“You were a murderer in your human life.  You must have been truly impressive.  Only the foulest of humans become what you are.  You will not be able to touch them, Altair.  You are not strong enough yet.”

 

Altair touched his horns, tried to pull the string off the end of one and burned his fingers instead.  ”What is it?”

 

“What color are they?”

 

“Gold,” Altair said.  He could not focus on Malik’s face, could not make out what expressions his features were making.  There was only the pulsing of his heartbeat thudding against the inside of his skull and the intensity of that golden light.  

 

“They are the strings that bind us to you.  You can see them now.  You can see every man and every demon for what they truly are.  If we are gold, we are precious to you.”  

 

Altair laughed at that notion.  The color shifted, pinked under the gold and Altair followed the shiver of that color up the long strands towards where it crossed over Malik’s shoulders and went out toward the main room.  There were livid red splashes across the floor again.  The scent of blood was so strong he could nearly taste it in the air.  

 

Malik’s hand grabbed him by the jaw and the instant sear of his flesh shocked his vision back to normal.  Gone was the golden twine.  Malik’s anger was a red rosy heat beneath his scales even as he released his hold on Altair.  ”You will _not_  eat my brother.  He is _precious_ to you.”

 

“What am I?” Altair asked.

 

“You are an aura demon.  A cannibal; you can only evolve if you eat other demons.  The stronger you are, the more demons will want you dead.  There has never been an aura demon that lived long enough to realize his full power.”  Malik’s wings fluttered behind him.  "We must hide you for now.  They will not harm what is mine.“

 

"What of the chain?” Altair asked.

 

Malik picked it up and dropped it again.  ”You are not trustworthy.  It will stay until you are.”  Then he stood up.  ”I am tending to Kadar.  If you do not scream before I return, I’ll bring you something to eat.”

 

Altair said nothing to him. 


	19. Chapter 19

Altair was angry almost constantly.  His head was filled with a pulsing beat of anger that rolled through his body in waves of intensity that varied from snotty refusal to answer questions to beating his fists against the wall shouting as loud as he could in unanswered rage.

 

He had thrown his clothes at Malik two nights ago when the bastard had ignored him in favor of tucking his wing over his body and going to sleep.  The jeans had caught on fire and Malik had not even noticed until he woke up with the metal from the buttons melted over his wings.  Unsurprisingly, Altair was not given any new clothes.  Most of the time he was too hot to care.  Sometimes he sat and stared at the strings that ran across skin pulled here-and-there by the movements of the unseen things the strings led to.  

 

Sometimes, Altair wrapped his hands around the chain and pulled with all of his might again-and-again while he shrieked in hunger so sudden and encompassing that he couldn’t stand it.  

 

Altair was going mad.  He could feel the last dredges of his humanity ebbing away.  The feeling was welcomed (so very welcome when humanity had never treated him well) and yet so terrifying.  It felt as if he were dying and every time his body grew heavy with the lack of a soul, panic pulled it back.  it went on for days and days, dragged into a week and then almost two.

 

He was exhausted, chained to a wall like an animal (and now, at last he felt like one).  Malik was gone—from the lack of the acidic stink of him truly gone from the home—and Desmond had already brought him his food for the day.  Kadar was somewhere nearby.  The smell of his blood (even encased inside of his skin as it was) was a terrible temptation that made the golden strings around Altair’s fingers shivering up pink.  His mouth watered and his jaw ached for want of freedom to attack Kadar.

 

But exhaustion kept him flat on the ground with one of his hands idly around the cool links of his chain.  The meat he did not wish to eat (most likely the meat of some surface animal) was spread out where he threw it in a rage.  Malik would bring him blood (soon, eventually) and that would soothe the hunger for a while.  

 

Kadar came by degrees.  First hovering in the doorway (stinking of delicious meat) and then venturing down the hall toward Altair, and out again and back again until at last he was in Malik’s room.  His bare feet were careful to carry him beyond the stretch of Altair’s chain.  His body was longer, his ribs thicker beneath his darkened skin.  There were new scales growing along his cheekbones, curling up around his eyes.  ”Does it hurt?” Kadar asked.  He crouched so he could spread his wings behind him.  There was a flash of silver in his hand that must have been a knife concealed along the line of his forearm.  

 

“Yes,” Altair said.  Even the effort of speaking that single word hurt.

 

“It will not get better.  You will never stop being hungry.”

 

“Are you here to feed me or lecture me?  One would be useful but I have had a lifetime of the other.”  Most of his life was spent being told he was arrogant and unlikable.  It was not even surprising to him now that he was becoming the most unlikable demon.  Altair rolled his head so he could see Kadar clearly.  

 

“Aura demons do not feel love,” Kadar said.  "They will eat anyone.  If you are becoming one it is because you cannot feel love.  Why would align yourself with my brother if you could not feel love for him?“

 

Because Malik was the strongest.  He was the most feared and respected of demons.  It was obvious from the first moment Altair had seen how the others reacted to him.  Sometimes, they lulled themselves into complacency but once Malik reminded them what he was capable of they renewed their respect for him.  ”Why should I love anyone?  I shackled to the wall of your house.  I was a pet and a meal.  Why does it matter to you now when it did not before?”

 

Kadar sighed.  ”I was not given a choice about becoming a demon.  My Mother turned me when I was very young.  I am still a child and I have lived here almost two hundred years.  Why have you chosen Malik?”

 

"I’m hungry,” Altair said.

 

The knife showed itself again.  Kadar’s whole body bristled at the very mention of the word.  ”You would have been well cared for as my pet.  You chose Malik, you pursued him and taunted him.  Why?”

 

“I want this collar off my throat,” Altair said.  He sat up and the effort was exhausting.  "I want to fuck him.  I want to _eat_.  I am hungry.”

 

“Malik will never take the collar off your throat.  He decimated an entire town when a boy stole his toy.  Imagine what he would do if someone attempted to take his pet-lover from him.  You have not made yourself more likely to gain freedom but assured that you can never have it.”  Kadar recoiled from him in fear (but not disgust) as he shuffled backward even farther.  The glint of golden string was like a half-seen shadow where it wrapped around Kadar’s throat.  It spread down his arms in long-open loops and coiled up tightest around his wrists.  It was pink in flashes of Altair’s heartbeat.

 

“You are like Abbas,” Altair said.  "He said you would be.  A whining waste of flesh.“  Altair got to his feet and the chain pulled at his neck heavier (suddenly) than it had been before.  The sigils carved into it were glowing in a faint white light.  "You regret that you did not eat me when you had the chance and you should!  I will carve my vengeance for your sins into your _bones_  when have finished ripping the flesh from from your carcass!”

 

Strangely, Kadar was not shaking in fear but staring at him with a sudden intensity of hatred that made his face look very much like his brother’s.  He stood up with his hands tight around the hilt of the small blade he had brought to protect himself.  ”When did Abbas say this to you?  He would never dare speak to you as long as Malik was there.”

 

"Your new pet attempted to run away and I saved him.”

 

Kadar’s teeth showed through his thin lips as he sneered to the side.  A rattling sound came from somewhere deep in his throat.  Kadar lifted his left arm and slashed across the artery in the bend of his elbow with the knife.  It cut deep enough to expose the pink meat under his skin.  The blood ran quick and hot down his arm.  ”Whet your appetite, I will bring you a meal to satiate your hunger.”  

 

Altair did not take the time to wonder over this sudden change in attitude but pressed his open mouth over the pulse of blood coming from Kadar’s broken skin.  The flavor—undiluted—was rich and delicious.  Kadar’s cut into the skin on the back of his shoulder and the pain was hardly worth noting in comparison.  


	20. Chapter 20

The truth was, Kadar was still a child.  He was no match for Abbas simply because he was not nearly as evolved.  Abbas’ technical superiority had saved him in the past.  There were no laws in hell but a general code of conduct that prevented pathetic little underlings like Kadar from attacking bigger predators.  It was ill-advised even if it were not outlawed.  Social convention did not stand a chance of persuading him away from his goal in light of this new unacceptable insult from the greasy-fat-demon.  

 

Kadar left Altair on his knees in Malik’s room with a stain of blood running down his face and neck.  His tongue was lapping at the blood that had gotten on his hands.  It was a treat and a taunt: something he had done to push Altair closer to the first (painful transformation).  The hunger would be fully awakened with the scent of the much-coveted blood so close at hand.  By the time Kadar returned, Altair would be delirious with it.

 

His plan was simple (perhaps so simple it was laughable) and concise.  Kadar took his knife as he stormed toward the market.  It was the central hub of the bitter wasteland that had only just now started to look like a proper village.  The demons that had flocked here had started building fields and making proper arrangements to transform the atmosphere into something that would allow them to _grow_  things.  Each day they gathered closer and closer to where Malik slept in the subconscious acknowledgement that they were utterly dependent on him for survival.  

 

Even Abbas, who talked so loudly about how he hated chaos demons and how he detested their effortless superiority, had followed after them for years.  Abbas was a poacher by trade: a foul thing that stole what others left unattended for even a minute.  The man who had swept in and stolen away the only chance Kadar-or-Malik had to save their mother.  The only reason the nasty bottom feeder still lived was that Mother had made Malik promise not to kill the shit stain.  

 

Kadar had made no such promises.  He was free-to-do-as-he-pleased as he went through the narrow aisles of the market.  If anyone was curious as to what drove him with such haste, nobody asked.  Kadar found his target outside of the market sorting through the daily trash thrown into the pit.  Abbas had his back to him.  The scars on his wings and the blunt end of his severed tail spoke of how little other demons cared for Abbas.  More than one had attempted to remove his wings but the greasy beast had always managed to get free of them.  

 

It was easy to take advantage of Abbas’ turned back.  Kadar grabbed his left wing in one hand and drove the full length of the knife into his back under his ribs.  The blade broke the thick skin with a stretch and then sudden _snap_  and slid slickly inward.  It was a petty attack, a minor assault compared to what a stronger demon might have managed.  But it was enough to raise red-rage to Abbas’ voice and eyes.  He reared back and struck Kadar with his wings and then the fat back of his hand.  

 

“You!” Abbas shouted.  His voice was a bellow in the open space around them.  The garish-width of his mouth spread to show the full extent of his round jaw and yellowed teeth.  "I will enjoy ripping you to pieces.“

 

Kadar got on his feet and folded his wings up as small as he could manage at his back.  ”You must catch me first.”  Then he turned and _ran_.  Abbas would follow (that was certain) because his pride had been wounded far more deeply than his body.  His footsteps were sloppy and hard as they pounded the ground behind Kadar all the way from the market to his house.  Caution and fear would not stop Abbas.

 

Blood demons were infamous for grudges and vengeance.  They knew no fear in the throes of getting their revenge.  Abbas followed him in through the open door of his home, past Desmond’s blanched-white-face and down the short hall into Malik’s room.  

 

Altair was still sucking the streaks of dried blood off his own arms, growling with hunger for more.  Kadar slid across the floor and landed on his elbows and knees by the far wall.  ”Altair,” he said.  Then he threw the knife to him.  

 

Abbas burst through the door with his wings-wide-open and a look of murder on his face.  If he saw Altair, all he saw was another human-turned-mindless-animal that was covered in his master’s blood and chained to a wall.  Humans enjoyed a variety of uses in hell: food and fuck toys being the most popular options.  Abbas did not consider Altair a threat and it was his final mistake.  

 

Because Altair’s eyes were dilating.  Because Altair was a natural-born-killer.  Because Altair was _starving_  and Abbas was bleeding-fresh-meat that waltzed in the door.  

 

Kadar scuttled back up to his feet in the half-beat that Abbas opened his mouth to say something about how he had him cornered.  Altair drove the knife up through the bottom of his jaw in one clean motion from where he had been kneeling on the floor to his hand grabbing Abbas by the horn to pull his head back.  When he pulled the knife free it made a sucking sound with a fine mist of blood.  

 

"What are you—”  Malik was in the doorway with a vivid red glow but the sudden sweltering heat of his anger was unnecessary.  

 

Altair stabbed Abbas three more times in quick-success, in the throat, the gut and very close to his heart.  The final wound exposed the richest blood—that closest to Abbas’ overtaxed heart—and the smell of it alone made the chain attached to Altair’s collar glow white in the attempt to bind his powers.  It was low magic, not capable of stalling the transformation that would happen as soon as Altair sank his teeth into Abbas’ flesh.  It could not stop the guttural growl of need or the way Altair used the knife to open the wound wide enough to drive his hand through.  His fingers were slick-and-red when he closed his fist around Abbas’ heart.  

 

Malik’s shoulders had gone a dangerous shade of blue-white.  ”Why?” he demanded.  

 

Altair was scratching at Abbas’ exposed rib in an attempt to spread it enough to pull his still beating heart out through his chest.  Abbas was pushing at him weakly to save his own life but Kadar had gouged his own spell work into Altair’s skin.  He was strong enough now to get what he wanted, strong enough (for the moment) to break bones and tear flesh if he wanted it enough.  

 

“He attacked our pets,” Kadar said.  (Because Malik only needed a reason to allow this.)  

 

Abbas collapsed and Altair followed him to the ground with both of his hands curled around his thick ribs and his arms tight with muscle as he pulled hard at them to reveal his prize.  It was a pitiful sight overlaid with Altair’s desperate sounds.  Malik considered it for a moment before he crouched low enough to pull Abbas closer by the foot.  The demon shrieked in fear at the sight of Malik (and the blue heat of his anger) but it was a short sound before Malik’s pulled the rib that protected his heart hard enough to snap it in two.  The bone smoked in his grasp and Altair was there in an instant to pull Abbas’ still beating heart out with both hands and sink his teeth into it.  

 

It was, all at once, the most perfect and most horrific thing Kadar had ever seen.  It was the painful, terrifying death of the man who’s selfishness assured the death of his mother and it was the birth of hell’s most vicious living nightmare.  Altair’s soul died silently, blinking out of existence with a orgasmic moan of fulfillment as his still-human-jaws moved with persistent eagerness to devour all that it could manage.  

 

Malik watched without horror.  He was _smiling_  at his pet-and-future-lover snarling like an animal over the carcass of a dead thing.  The dizzying heat of before was gone in a sudden hushed cooling of his anger.  There was only pride and _desire_  now and neither could produce the painful heat of before.  

 

Kadar stood at his side and forced himself to watch.  Aura demons ate the weak and the wilting.  The only hope they had of buying Altair’s loyalty was to maintain fearlessness.  So he crouched low and reached over to pull at Altair’s face.  ”I brought you this meat,” he said.  ” _Thank_  me.”

 

Altair’s eyes had gone all black, there was no white to be seen.  No gold save for a sliver thin ring of it around the edges.  His breath was heavy through his nose.  It was obvious from the sneer on his face he intended to do no such thing until he looked at Malik first.  ”Thank you,” Altair ground out through his bloody teeth.  

 

Kadar stood again.

 

“This is a monster you have made now,” Malik said to him.  "A far more fearsome creature than mine.“


	21. Chapter 21

Malik brought a stool tall enough to sit  with his wings spread in a tilt behind his back and comfortable enough to sit in while he watched.  His pet was filthy as he ate, his fingers curled like claws as he stuffed ever bite he could into his jaws.  There was no sensation that Altair could feel now except for hunger: _ravenous_ , unquenchable _hunger_.  

 

And as long as he ate, he would feel nothing but the same.

 

The problem lay in when Altair ran out of bits of Abbas he wanted to eat.  He had already stripped the sweetmeats from his abdomen and used the knife that Kadar had given him to cut away a few choice other pieces.  The effort of dressing his kill had covered him head-to-foot in blood.  It was even streaked through his hair.  

 

The chain that had been glowing only a faint white before was illuminating the whole room with blue-light as the spells burnt themselves out of power attempting to hold off the inevitable.  Altair’s eyes were black, his voice had been reduced to a constant purr of pleasure.  His human soul was dead and its place the monster they had grown would fight to be free of the brittle human prison.  

 

Malik sat with patience, long after Kadar had gone.  He sat and watched until Altair could not find anything else that appealed to him.  He sneered at the bits of flesh that still remained and shook the gray matter he’d pulled out of Abbas’ skull off his fingers.  His nostrils contracted with the effort of sniffing out a better meal—consumed by hunger, removed of sense—he caught Malik’s scent.  Altair did not smile but crawl forward on his toes-and-fingertips.  His hands were sticky when they closed around Malik’s knees and his whole face was a cracking-red-mask of drying blood.  

 

“Yes?” Malik said.  

 

Altair’s hands were cool against the insides of his legs when he pushed them open with just his thumbs.  His hands would blister from the exposure but he couldn’t feel it (yet).  There was a bold fearlessness that came with his inability to feel pain.  

 

Malik was as cool to the touch as he could force himself to become without risking extinguishing himself.  He ran his thumb down Altair’s face, slid his hand around the man’s neck to feel the erratic jump-and-thrum of his pulse pounding hard just under his skin.  ”You would not like the taste of me.”

 

“I’m hungry,” Altair said.  He could not lean forward to put his mouth on Malik’s skin and it made him angry.  The collar was tight against his throat and the chain was pulled taut behind him.  His teeth were pink when he opened his mouth in a unhappily-denied-hiss.

 

“Soon,” Malik promised.  He ran his hand down the center of Altair’s chest, felt at his bones beneath his skin.  His whole body was terribly fragile still.  It would remain so until his wings grew.  

 

Altair was not pleased to be denied but he sat back to relieve the pressure the collar put on his throat and sat on knees in front of Malik.  The chain’s spell work was nearly exhausted, the blue glow was dimming into a muted white again.  Some of the chain links were flickering out as the spell’s power depleted itself.  Those that remained were getting faint.

 

“This will hurt,” Malik said to him.  He stood up and went around Altair to pick up the knife that Kadar had left and threw it down the hall.  He went back to the stool and picked up the leather cuffs he had brought in.  "Give me your hands.“

 

"Why?” Altair asked.  Even as he offered his wrists up to Malik.  

 

“The agony you are about to experience will make you wish for death.  You are strong enough and clever enough to find a way to kill yourself even in the throes of such torture.  I have seen it once.  Kadar was only a child and he still managed to bash his head against the ground so hard it cracked his skull.  Blood demons are angels in comparison to what you are becoming.  Your transformation will not be so forgiving.”  He buckled the first cuff around Altair’s left wrist and then stepped behind him.  

 

Altair looked over his shoulder to watch him with a frown.  ”You did not say as much before.”

 

Malik buckled the second cuff around Altair’s right wrist behind his back.  He took a moment to watch the flex of muscles all along his back.  He touched one of his fingers at the nape of Altair’s neck and ran it down the line of spine.  ”The first transformation is the worst of them all.  You will not remember it when it is over.”  His bones were already moving under his skin.  The small, barely noticeable flutterings of far worse tortures to come.

 

“I’m hungry,” Altair said.  It was more desperate than the time before.  The euphoric feeling must be fading already.  Panic against the sensation of drowning and being ripped apart from the inside-out would make him a rabid animal.  "Malik!“  

 

Malik grabbed the corpse by the ankle and started dragging it away.  ”I will be back,” he said.

 

"Malik!” Altair shouted.  The chain clanked as he ran for the door but the last bit of light faded before Malik turned the corner at the end of the short hall.  The moment it was gone, Altair started _screaming_.

 

Kadar was standing outside of the back door with his hands over his ears and his eyes closed.  The scar that ran up the right side of his head was mostly covered by his unruly hair.  The memory of his impassioned pleas for death had been scoured out of his own head.  Malik remembered them.  ”Make him stop,” Kadar said.

 

Malik threw Abbas’ carcass in the fire pit but did not burn it.  The hounds would like the treat and it seemed a fitting final disgrace for the foul demon.  ”There is nothing that will soothe him now, except death.  That I will not permit.”

 

Kadar looked at him out of the corner of his eyes, “seems like too much work just to get laid, Malik.  Seems like too much death.”

 

“There are always demons that deserve to die, Kadar.  I am allowed this for all that I have given.”  He did not turn his head toward the awful screaming but looked at Desmond creeping out of the house with his face as white as chalk and a nervous shake to his limbs.

 

“How long does that go on?” Desmond asked.

 

“As long as it takes,” Malik said.  Hours, days or weeks as necessary.  He looked at his brother again, at his claws digging into his own scalp.  And the half-healed wound on his arm where he’d fed Altair.  "If you cannot stay, take your pet and dig for bones.  I have run out.“  

 

Kadar with with eager gratitude.  Desmond followed with easy relief.

 

Malik sat and waited for the hounds to find their treat.  They crept on uneasy paws to retrieve it, unnerved by Malik’s presence and the horrible screaming that burst out of the open windows of his home.  


	22. something sexy happens here

The ultimate truth was that Malik was _vital_  to continuing life in hell.  This revelation had come only after the simpering, scared little demons (freshly turned from mortals the chaos demons had plucked from the surface) had tried to kill them all.  It took a great deal of effort to extinguish a fire demon.  Perhaps more than it was worth but the other demons persisted long after they should have quit.  In retaliation, the largest of the fire demons had simply sat down and _slept_.  Sleep dimmed the fire that filled their bodies until they were great heaps of ash hardened into the shape of their former glory.  

Without the chaos demons, hell became a dark, frozen wasteland.  The barriers of their world hardened and not even the strongest of the other demons could force their way to the surface world.  Absent the food they plucked from the fertile plains above them, life began to wither and die.  There was only a fraction of the population left before desperation finally pushed the demons to reignite the chaos demons.  Only a few were brought back to life.  Malik was not meant to be one of them.  He had been a runt—too small to provide heat and light—and had been left to sleep for an eternity until his Mother found him.  

 

The old demons had gone quiet again.  The sky had darkened, the air was crisp with cold in all the places chaos demons no longer lived.  Civilization was a privilege that only a few were allowed.  Those that lived closest to him understood that his life made theirs possible.  That they feared him and the destruction his rage could bring was only a slight nuisance.  They would not challenge him and that was what was important.

 

All this was what he did not say when he went to speak to the witch demon that sold potions and spell work out of his crumbling little hovel far away from the more visually pleasing market.  The witch demon had gone blind with age but he knew Malik by the smell.  

 

“I need meat,” Malik said.

 

“How fresh?” the witch asked him.  His son (a small child by all standards) was already dragging a metal box out from a hidden place in the wall.  Both of his small hands around the large handle of it as it grated across the floor.  The witch opened it with a dismissive flick of his long hooked nails and plucked out a long strip of still red flesh.  He held it out toward Malik.  "Has your brother gotten a hound pup again?  I heard he had moved onto more troublesome pets.“

 

"He has, but they are no less likely to eat him.”  Malik left the witch before more questions could be asked and carried his burden back to the house.  Altair had stopped screaming (at last) in the morning and Kadar had crept back in on hands and knees to hide in his room with Desmond following close at his back.  Altair had lapsed into a unforgiving sleep that allowed Malik to clean him and inspect the changes to his body.

 

First transformations were painful for how they scraped out the last of the human bits and began replacing them with demon parts.  There was a ridge of new bone and muscle spreading across Altair’s back and shoulders where his wings would grow.  The skin of his neck had thickened and darkened.  His eyes were perfected to the sight he had acquired as an aura demon.  His fingers were already beginning to form thick points where claws would extend out.  His heart was made stronger, his lungs were mutated to withstand the greasy stink of this world.

 

Altair was burdened with bruises he had inflicted on himself as he convulsed in pain but there was no important damage to worry over.  Reassured, Malik left him to sleep and went to find him something to satiate the hunger he would wake with.  

 

He went home and found Altair sitting near to the wall so that the chain was not pulling at his neck.  His head was tipped forward and his arms were still cuffed behind his back.  He had a pretty color to his skin now that had been fading away from his human body.  (Hell was not made to sustain human life; humans always died here.)  But it was his eyes (feral and bright) that were the most intriguing difference.  And the way his whole body tensed when he caught the scent of the meat Malik had gotten for him.  

 

“Hungry?” he asked.  The heat of his hands had started to slowly roast the meat but there was still enough blood in it to entice Altair.  "Come here,“ Malik said.  He expected Altair to get to his feet with typical arrogance and was pleasantly (profoundly) surprised when Altair shuffled forward on his knees.  It was an uncharacteristic show of submission from the human who had been toying with him for months.  Once he was kneeling in front of Malik he sat back on his legs and tipped his head up to look at him.  "Open your mouth,” Malik said.

 

The edges of Altair’s face had started to darken.  All of his skin would darken as he evolved.  His ears had pinched at the tips so that the acute human roundness was already lost.  For a moment he stared at Malik as if he did not intend to obey and then he opened his mouth.  A string of eager saliva spread from his top to his bottom lip before it snapped (at last).  Altair’s lips-and-tongue were _pink_  and _slick_  and _waiting_.  

 

Malik tore a strip of the meat from the greater whole and dangled it over Altair’s open mouth.  The fat little drips of blood ran down the meat and landed in perfect round circles on his lip and tongue.  Altair’s whole body shook for want of it even as he moaned in pleasure at the very taste but he did not move.  His mouth stayed open as he watched Malik’s face with intense _interest_.  He dropped the strip of meat into Altair’s mouth.  ”Eat it,” he said.

 

Altair ate without pause, chewing it with violent delight before shifting on his knees and tipping his head with his mouth wide-open once again.  

 

Malik fed it to him, piece by piece, until there was nothing left but the faint smell of it burnt into Malik’s skin.  By then his body was viciously hot with unanswered arousal.  Altair’s whole body was covered in sweat from the heat and his own cock was hardened against his belly.  Still he sat there on his knees with his head tipped back and his mouth opened.  

 

There was no part of Malik that wanted to attempt some manner of common sense.  His whole body felt too heavy and too tight to ignore.  Altair’s stare dropped from his face to the obvious shape of his own erection still contained in his pants and then back up to his face.  His lips quirked up at the edges as he closed his mouth with deliberate slowness.  

 

“Am I not strong enough now?”

“No,” Malik said.  "You will need your wings and even then a great deal of spells to protect you until you are fully evolved.“

 

Altair made a discontent noise that was very much like a whine.  He said, “you did a spell before—”

 

Yes but that had been a stupid idea.  It was stupider now but Malik still reached out his finger (furiously hot) and began the long familiar set of sigils.  They spread the whole distance across Altair’s chest in a line of blistered and white-charred flesh but the man did not move away from it.  He stared at Malik with his teeth gritted and the faint smear of blood all around his mouth.  ”Is it done?” he asked as soon as Malik stopped.

 

"Yes,” he said.

 

Then Altair got to his feet and pressed their mouths together.  His tongue was different-now (longer, slimmer) as it pushed into his mouth.  His whole body was different and the same all at once.  Malik put one arm around his back and grabbed his bare thigh to pull him off the ground.  He stepped forward until Altair hit the wall with a grunt and still did not stop kissing him save for a moment to suck at his neck.  Altair’s legs were around Malik’s body as he fucked up against his belly with shameless want.  

 

The spell he burnt into Altair’s skin was already fading, being eaten away by the contact and the damage it absorbed.  Malik rubbed his own erection against Altair’s body and felt the vibration of the moan that rumbled all through his body and out of his mouth.  Altair’s head tipped back as his pink-red-tongue lapped at his lips and his heels dug into Malik’s back to hold him as close as he could manage.  

 

Altair came with a startled cry in the last-precious-seconds before the final sigil faded and Malik had to shove himself away for fear of burning Altair.  The splatter of semen on his skin fizzled and dried almost instantly and Altair’s smile at the sound of it frying on his belly was arrogant and pleased.  He sagged against the wall with his arms still bound behind his back.  He lapped at the dried blood on his lips.

 

“Malik,” he said, “I’m hungry.”  


	23. Desmond doesn't like anything

Desmond’s life had been pretty damn ordinary up until the moment he turned a corner into an alley where a demon was busy eating some poor fool that had the misfortune of stumbling into the demon’s path.  Then he had tried (and failed) to run for his life, been pulled into hell and was now a collared pet.  While that was enough of an insult to make anyone unhappy, the real kicker was that in hell, there seemed to be a fifty-fifty chance that he’d either become dinner or a sex pet.  

Until such time as his owner (a rather annoyingly juvenile demon named Kadar who liked shiny things and sporadically tried his hand at proper pet care) decided which would be his fate, Desmond was left to languish in dread.  He had a front-row seat to an obviously ill-fated romance between the asshole that preceded him as Kadar’s pet (now Malik’s pet).  

 

Altair was the reason Desmond was thigh deep in ash-and-soot-and-soil plucking bits of demon bones out of the ground while Kadar crouched at the edge of the grave with his forearms across his knees.  ”What are we doing this for?”

 

Kadar took the bones he found, examined them for usefulness and dropped the ones he didn’t care for.  ”Malik grinds the bones to use in his spells.  These ones are for Altair to make him evolve faster.”

 

Oh right.  Desmond pulled a long bone out of the dirt and passed it up to Kadar.  ”And what is Altair now?”

 

“He is an aura demon.”  Kadar dusted the bone off and considered it before putting it in the keep pile.  "We have not seen a fully grown one but its wildly believe that at full strength, aura demons have the power to manipulate others by pulling on the strings they can see.“

 

Desmond straightened back up, rubbed at the collar on his throat (and the sweat that was making it uncomfortable) and looked up at his master.  (What a ridiculous thing to have.)  ”Are you going to turn me into a demon?”

 

Kadar laughed.  ”No.  Altair wanted to be a demon.  Malik wants to fuck him.  You are safe.”

 

Well, that left eventual dinner.  Desmond sighed and went back to looking for bones.  When he had robbed the grave of all useful bits, Kadar pulled him back out of the grave and held him still with one hand on his arm before batting his wings to blow the dust off him.  Then he ruffled up Desmond’s hair to get those bits out.  ”Why did you bring me here?” Desmond asked.

 

Kadar cocked his head to the side.  ”I like having pets.  Humans are the best kind.  They are loyal and obedient and less likely to eat me than any of the things that live here.”

 

"Then why wasn’t Altair happy being a pet?” Desmond asked.

 

Kadar rolled his eyes.  ”Because he was already a killer.  You were not.  You will be fine.  Stop asking so many questions.”  

 

Right, he should just collect some bones and pretend like the only other human he had seen in hell wasn’t currently screaming in pitiful pain back at the house.  He was supposed to ignore how Malik was basically a walking volcano and how demon-human relationships were so normal in hell that nobody was bothered by (technical) bestiality.  The fact that he’d apparently been kidnapped by a demon that hadn’t hit puberty wasn’t comforting when it seemed inevitable that he would end up as dinner.


	24. Altair doesn't like being tattooed

Kadar was not going to get eaten by his brother’s pet-slash-lover.  While he was all for the notion of training Altair not to eat him through good old fashion conditioning (the sort of thing that demons as old as Malik had the time and patience to manage), Kadar needed something more comforting that the idea that they might be able to successfully deter Altair from deciding he was a delectable dinner.  The problem might have gone on (indefinitely) if Malik hadn’t taken up buying (more or less) strips of nearly-rotten flesh from the old man witch demon that lived at the edge of the village.

 

 

“What are we doing?” Desmond asked (again) when he stalled out in front of the door.  The witch demon’s lair (because such a place could not be considered a home or a shop) was covered in a variety of warding sigils to keep out things like Altair and allow in things that meant to do honest business.  It was also decorated with purposefully grotesque and bizarre displays.  The hanging bones of dozens and dozens of different kinds of creatures.  The doorway was covered with a flap made of human flesh that had been painted with a final incantation to ward off those that wished the old man harm.  

 

“We are buying a spell,” Kadar said.  He pushed the flap open and pulled Desmond inside.  The interior was no less intimidating to the little human who (most days) did not put himself any physically closer than he absolutely had to but was now pressed against Kadar’s left side in attempt to trick himself into feeling safe.  His fear was not helped by the menacing glare of the little demons that were sharpening cow bones into ritual daggers.  

 

The old witch demon sat crooked and bent behind his counter.  His eyes had long since gone milky-white with blindness, his face (once a vibrant color) was grayed the way his horns erupting from his forehead had begun to crumble at the ends.  His nose—thin and long—sniffed at the air before his mouth opened in a red-gummed-smile.  Devoid of any teeth, the demon was as inoffensive and defenseless as any could be.  He rubbed his hands together as he turned to look at Kadar.  

 

“What pet have you gotten now, little one?” the witch demon asked him.

 

“It is not my pet that I’ve come to ask about.  It is my brothers.  I need to be sure that it doesn’t eat me.”  Because it would try.  Even if Malik said Altair wouldn’t.  Hunger was _hunger_  and denying it took feats of strength that no demon was capable of maintaining when first transformed.

 

“The cannibal demon,” the witch said.  "A cousin of mine, yes?“  Witch demons were scavengers.  Often seen at funerals with a variety of long knives and reliably found near fresh graves.  Witch demons ate the flesh of the already dead.  They were tolerable because they were useful.  Hell was built on spells and witch demons were second only to chaos demons on the ability to manipulate the unseen power around them.  "Was it your blood that turned it?”

 

“Yes,” Kadar said.  

 

The witch demon hummed.  ”I cannot do much.  Perhaps a spell that will prevent it from killing you.”

 

At this point Desmond had pressed himself against Kadar’s back between his wing and his shoulder and curled his hand around Kadar’s side as his heartbeat quickened in his chest.  If he could only understand that human meat was unappealing to the witch demons he might not have bothered with such obvious displays of fear.  (If only Kadar hadn’t brought him, he wouldn’t have a disadvantage in his attempts at bartering.)  

 

“This is what I want,” Kadar said.

 

“Cannot kill you,” the witch demon repeated, “but it will not stop him from eating what bits of you that would not kill you.”  He made a humming sound as he waved a hooked finger and one of his children scuttled under another flap that led into a store room.  He came out again with a bottle of silver ink.  It had a glow to it that made Kadar’s flesh crawl.  "You will need some things,“ the witch demon said.  "And we must settle on a price.”

 

“What do you have in mind?” Kadar asked.

 

“A spell for a spell,” the witch demon said, “you are a frequent traveler to the surface world.  I have the feeling in my old bones that I am not meant to live much longer.  My children are not all the same as I am.  They will need to eat.”

 

“You want me to bring them food?” Kadar asked.  "How long?“

 

"Ten years,” the witch demon said.  His palm began to glow green-and-yellow before it spread up around the back of his hand and down into his fingertips.  His claws burnt with sudden energy as he held his hand out.  "That is not so long for you.  You are only a child.“

 

Kadar nodded and shook the witch’s hand.  The pain was immediate but not severe.  A brand spread out across the arch of one of his wings, a glow of blue-and-yellow that would not fade until he’d fulfilled the conditions of the contract.  In return he was given a long slip of paper with a spell, the silver ink, a second spell for absorbing knowledge (from his food) and a list of steps to follow.

 

First, he returned Desmond to the house and then he went to the surface world to fetch the supplies he needed.  That took longer than he expected because finding a human in possession of both a tattoo gun and a reasonably good ability to use it was difficult.  He managed to find one and after cracking open her skull, coated her brain with the powder (that had a chalky taste) he ate that and took all her equipment and knowledge and returned to hell.

 

Kadar had been to zoos, long after the humans left, and watched the wild animals they loved-and-feared pacing around their cages.  The magnificence of a predator housed behind bars had fascinated him in the same way it captivated the humans.  Standing in front of Altair was something very similar to that.  

 

His whole body had changed and yet not changed at all.  The difference was only perceptible by tiny degrees.  His skin was a shade darker everywhere, his flesh was not as fragile.  His eyes were brighter.  More than anything, his hunger was as obvious as the ridge of tendon, bone and muscle that stuck out of his back.  That skin was pulled taut and bruised from the effort of his body reforming itself it.  There was the hard knob of horns that would grow from just under his hairline in the front.  Altair’s arms were bound behind him (still) and his mouth was stained with blood.  

 

"I’m hungry,” Altair said as he paced back-and-forth as far as his chain would allow him.  He eyed the tattoo gun in his hand and the long trail of the cord that attached to the battery he’d bought at the market.  He was a wild animal, aware of danger without understand what it was.  "What is that?“

 

"If you are good, I will feed you,” Kadar said.  

 

“What is it?” Altair asked again.  

 

“On your knees.”  It was important to do this before Malik returned.  He did not leave often now that Altair was changing but if Kadar did not finish his task before his brother returned it was very possible he would not be allowed to do so.  Leaving marks on Altair that would never fade would probably infuriate Malik as it was, but getting caught endangered all their lives.  

 

“I’m _hungry_ ,” Altair said instead.

 

"I will feed you.”

 

“What?” Altair demanded.  "What will you feed me?  What will it be—what is that?“  

 

Kadar set the tattoo gun down and picked up the bat he’d also taken from the woman.  It was thick and metal and delightfully heavy in his hand.  ”On your knees,” Kadar said.  ”I do not want to hit you but I will.”

 

Altair couldn’t fight him now.  He was crippled by his bindings and his hunger.  His face was a viciously displeased frown as he got on his knees.  ”What is that?” he asked again.

 

"A tattoo gun,” Kadar said.  He picked up the braided leather cord and moved close enough that he could loop it around Altair’s elbows and tightened it across his chest so that his arms were restricted from any sort of movement.  it had the benefit of being extremely heavy to whoever was bound with it.  Altair sagged under the weight when Kadar finished the last knot.  It did not take much to knock him forward onto his belly.  Kadar picked up the tattoo gun and straddled his thighs.

 

“What are you doing?” Altair demanded.

 

“This is going to hurt,” Kadar said.  "Probably a lot.  I can’t let you kill me.  You understand that don’t you?“

 

Altair struggled but he was unable to do more than wiggle in place.  His defeat was a growl.  He startled into a brief surge of greater strength when Kadar turned the tattoo gun on but even that was nothing compared the searing pain as his flesh bubbled up nearly instantly when Kadar started tattooing the spell into his skin.  It started at the base of his neck on his back and went all the way down the line of his spine to his hips.  The ink—iridescent and silver—was made from the holy water of the Earth’s only sacred pool and the rocks that had soaked in it for eons.  It was the only substance in hell that could make a permanent spell.  

 

Kadar’s hands were burned just from being so close to it.  Altair’s wailing cut off only when he passed out and began again when the pain woke him.  His whole body was coated in thick sweat as he tried to fight against his bindings and free himself.  His feet kicked uselessly against the ground as his attempt at words dissolved into wordless grunting and snarling.

 

When it was finished, Altair’s whole was bloody from the effort of trying to repel the ink.  His breathing had gone shallow and his skin was hot as fire.  Kadar threw the tattoo gun and gasped at the blisters on his fingers as he sagged to the side.  

 

Altair was staring at him with his bright-glowing-eyes and his bloody mouth.  ”Malik is coming.  You should not be here when he comes.”

 

No.  Most likely not.  Kadar picked up the knife he’d brought and cut a gash into his elbow where the blood flowed the best.  He scooted across the floor so his arm was under Altair’s eager-open mouth.  Altair’s teeth scraped across the open wound before he closed his mouth around it and sucked.  He stayed still only a moment before he pulled himself away and struggled back up to his feet.  Altair was cursing at him again.

 

"I’m hungry!” he was shouting.  Kadar did not even struggle his way out to the larger rooms of the house but spread his wings as much as he could manage in the hall of Malik’s room and forced himself up into the surface world.  (Malik would not follow him here.)


	25. Malik is very upset

Malik walked in on the scene of a crime.

A cringing little coward had bought a spell from a despicable bottom feeder and gone so far as to bind his intended victim so that he was completely helpless.  Pain or exhaustion had rendered Altair entirely unconscious but the evidence of the brutal disfigurement remained nonetheless.  His skin—raw and new so soon after his first transformation—had the distinct look of having been boiled.  The bubbled flesh around the brilliant glittering silver ink was oozing fresh blood in an endless attempt to force the unwanted intrusion out of his flesh.  

Malik’s jaw was clenched so tightly the sound of his teeth grating was echoing inside of his skull.  The puff of his breath burnt like curls of smoke around his face.  In the periphery of his vision, he could see the tips of his horns start to steam.  The claws he tried so hard to keep filed back began to glow from the sheer heat of his anger.  ”Desmond!” he shouted, “where is he?”

“He left,” Desmond shouted back.

Altair jerked awake at the sound of his voice.  His shoulders rocked as he struggled against the weight of the rope binding his arms.  He turned his face so that Malik could see the coward’s blood smeared across his mouth.  ”It hurts,” he said.  His eyes were not glimmering now.  His face was pale and wan.  The meager offering of blood would not hold him when he had been so carelessly defiled.  

“Are you hungry?” Malik asked.

No, Altair was tired.  ”Yes,” he said.

Malik reached down and closed his hand around the braided leather, it snapped in his palm from the heat.  ”Get up.”  When Altair was on his feet, Malik grabbed the chain by the loop he’d put into the wall, put one hand on the rock and watched it start to glow and turn molten.  He pulled the end of the chain free as Altair squinted at the heat surrounding him.  

The distance between Malik’s home and the witch demon’s lair took too long to cross on foot.  He said, “hang on,” to Altair and gave him only enough time to get his hands around the chain before he spread his wings.  Sparks flew away from them, bits of ash and fire that erupted before extinguishing again almost immediately.  

“Don’t hang me,” Altair said. 

Malik flew them to the witch demon’s.  Altair managed to hang on despite the lacking strength of his limbs.  When he dropped his pet-and-lover on the ground outside of the home there was a fat demon with a youthful face staring at him with wide-wide-eyes.  ”Eat whatever you can catch,” Malik said to Altair.

The doorway of the witch demon’s home was too narrow for his wings and the sweltering swell of fire that was sparking in the air around him.  It was laced across the back of his arms, wrapped around his hands and dangling from his fists like ropes.  It was flowing out of the creases in his wings and showering to the ground like fat drops of rain that extinguished themselves against the sandy-dry-ground.  

And it was in his throat, a great round ball of it that was dry-and-tasteless across his tongue when he opened his mouth.  Malik dug his hands into the stone that this witch had made it’s home out of.  He pulled it apart so that it split along the center and fire filled the cracks until they expanded.  

“Coward!” Malik screamed into the interior of the home and the word went like  _fire_  until a great rush of feet and screaming little voices spilled out from the many hidden exits.  ”Rabid poacher!”  He released the home after fire consumed it.

The old witch demon was crawling in the dirt with a cluster of its children around it.  They were crying in fear as they yanked on the old demon’s arms and legs to urge it back to its feet.  The thin-and-pale skin of the witch demon’s back was mottled with old spells and debts that would never be fulfilled.  

“I allowed you to live!” Malik screamed at him.  His wings fluttered spastically to the side as he stalked over to where the witch demon was still crawling for its life.  He bent forward and the long hooked claws at the curve of his wings dug into the dirt.  The children (hundreds of year’s old but still fat and short) were screaming at the dome of fire that held them in his grasp.  "This is how you repay me?“ Malik screamed at the witch demon.  

The very air around them was hellishly hot.  Everything was cast in blue-and-white light.  The very last of the orange was fading away from his flesh as the true depth of his fury came free from the last grasps of his restraint.  

"Spare my children!” the witch demon said.  "You will need them!“

Hell needed no such thing.  Malik opened his mouth as the air in his lungs turned to pure fire.  He could see the blue-glint of it mirrored in the witch demon’s sightless eyes.  ”I need only one.”

They were collapsing.  Witch demons did not mature easily or quickly.  They were so easy to kill in their youth.  Not all of the witch demon’s worthless orphans were witches themselves.  They were starved blood demons and flightless half-demons.  Those were the first that collapsed.  Their skin burnt and their lungs crisped.  

The witch demon was old, nearly ancient, old enough to withstand the fire long enough to know that its children were dying.  Long enough to hear their cries as they succumbed to unconsciousness.  There might have been tears in its eyes as it reached out blindly toward their little bodies piled all around it.  ”Please,” the witch demon said, “please!”

Malik stood up again.  He was not motivated by any sense of mercy.  He turned his head to see Altair staring hungrily at the plump little dumplings lying around.  They were deliciously roasted but their hearts were still beating.  They were a perfect feast for his pet.  Malik beckoned him closer and snapped the bindings that kept his hands behind his back.  

Altair pulled a bone knife out of one of the larger one’s belt and shoved it over onto its back before he fell on his knees and started butchering his first kill.  The sound of the wet dissection of this offering was loud over the slow, pitiful wail of the witch demon’s sorrow.

Malik snapped his wings shut behind him.  ”All will remember what is owed to me.”

Altair’s greedy hands were slick with blood as he sat across the demon’s gut pushing its heart into his mouth with a moan of pleasure.  The few of the witch demon’s orphans that were capable of it tried to run.  They did not make it past the first stumbling footsteps before they fell over again.  Altair was still chewing when he got up and clenched his hand around the knife again.  ”You did this to me?” Altair demanded of the old demon.  

"Spare my children,” the witch demon said.

Altair spit on it.  The red splatter of one of its children’s hearts.  ”You, I will eat last.”  Then he found the nearest body and shoved it face down in the dirt before slicing open the demon’s back and dragging it’s lungs out.  


	26. Horny Baby Demon Altair

Altair ate for hours.  

He peeled the delicious little offerings until the red insides showed and he plucked out the bits that tasted the best first.  Malik kept his feast from running away but otherwise watched from a dispassionate distance.  Altair was _starved_  and _hungry_  in a way that his human memories could not reconcile.  The great emptiness in his stomach felt endless despite the exhaustion in his jaw from chewing.  

 

The only sensation he could feel besides the endless gnaw of his own endless appetite was the itch that split the skin at the top of his forehead just beneath his hair line.  The area had tightened into hard and crusted patches of skin that he scratched at with his dirty nails until it split and the pointed tips of horns grew through.  He discovered them halfway through eating one of the less delicious offerings (a half-demon, Malik told him). 

 

The discovery abated in his hunger in favor of his curious investigation of the phenomenon.  They were small horns, barely a full fingertip in length away from the hardened skin.  They were pointed but dull and when he pushed at them, it was an odd pressure but not a true sensation.  

 

Altair looked over his shoulder to where Malik was standing.  The livid blue-white of his skin had cooled back into the normal flesh tone beneath his smooth reflective scales.  His horns that had been impressively long and curled seemed to have grown thicker and longer.  The curves of them had a distinctly ridged look to them that Altair wanted to touch.  He licked the blood and stringy bits of flesh off his mouth and went over to Malik.

 

The chain still attached to his collar was dragging on the ground behind him as he went.  Malik realized he was approaching and cocked his head.  His eyes narrowed and his lips pulled up into a smile as he reached out a hand to brush his fingers across the small rise of Altair’s new horns.  ”You are getting stronger.”

 

He did not feel stronger (but hungry).  His hands were slimy with blood when he reached up to run his fingers down the bumps and ridges of Malik’s horns.  They were dull in heat compared to the rest of his body, covered in ash over the glassy looking horns.  He followed the curl of the horns around until he reached the coarse bristle of Malik’s hair and the cracked and thickened skin around the base of the horns.  There was the intolerable heat of his whole body.  Altair ran his thumb down the center of Malik’s forehead, down his nose and then pressed it against his lips.  

 

A shimmer-thin gold string caught on his thumb, curled up around his hand and wrist and fell in a long loop that dangled against Malik’s bare chest.  The other end of it was wrapped around Malik’s horns.  

 

“You are not fully healed yet,” Malik said.  He pushed Altair’s hand away from him.  "Finish your food.“

 

"This thing your brother has done, is there a way to use it for us?”  He did not fully understand what had been cut and seared into his back but he could feel the odd stall of his thoughts that would not allow him to imagine ripping out Kadar’s throat.  He thought it seemed like he must have wanted to kill the little bastard for hurting him but the desire simply would not manifest.  In place of it, he could only dwell on bodily harm that would not kill.  

 

“You’re not strong enough,” Malik said. “The spell that would need to be engraved on your flesh would kill you.  When you are stronger.  Go.  Eat.”

 

Altair _was_  hungry.  But the golden string was pulling taut around his wrist so he lifted up onto his toes and pressed his bloody mouth in slant across Malik’s.  It was a brief-hot-touch before he was shoved away again.  A blush of heat was blooming up in Malik’s face as the recently denied anger flooded red-and-orange across his shoulders.

 

“Eat,” Malik said to him again.  "Then you can thank me.“

 

Yes.


	27. Kadar gets punished

Kadar came back to eerie silence.  The most unsettling stillness that carpeted the whole of the home in an air of sacred _nothingness_.  The only sign of any life that persisted in the coolness was Desmond sleeping soundly in his nest of pillows and blankets.  

 

He crept through the house on superstitious toes.  There was no reason to expect that Malik wouldn’t be infuriated to have his pet maimed without permission and the blatant fear that buying such a spell betrayed would annoy Malik on principle.  (It was easy for Malik to hate weakness and fear because there was nothing in hell or on earth that could kill him.  It was easy to fear nothing when you were the apex predator.)  Kadar went toward his room, slinking down the hall and into the safety of his own room where he could hide until his return was discovered.

 

“Hi,” Altair said.  He was standing in the room (filled with light when he entered) with his chain hanging loose from his neck to the floor.  The sides of his face and his neck had started to gray as his new skin slowly took over the old human skin.  His fingers were sharpening into claws and the first painful eruption of wings were growing like spindle-thin-bones stabbing at his still-human-colored skin from his back.  His eyes were vivid and gold and his fists were white-knuckle-grips around a carved bone knife.  

 

One of the witch demon’s ceremonial knives.  

 

Kadar turned with a quick jerk of his body and face planted into an invisible barrier held in place by tiny-script etched into the arch of his doorway.  He banged his fists on it (uselessly) and then spun around again.  ”Altair,” he said.

 

“Do not be scared,” Altair said to him.  He pointed the cruelly sharpened knife at him.  "I cannot kill you.“  But this amused statement fell flat as he pointed at the ground with the knife in his hand.  "Lay on the ground and I will only hurt you a little.  Resist me and I will _not_ be so _kind_.”

 

"No,” Kadar said. 

 

“Malik will heal you when I am through,” Altair assured him.  

 

There was no way out of the room.  The doorway was the only exit and Kadar could not scratch the etching of the spell that held him in place.  Even if he could escape, the growing blush of heat coming down the hall betrayed his brother’s anger.  Kadar pressed his back against the wall and pulled his wings in as tight as he could.  ”I could not let you kill me,” Kadar said.

 

“I can not let you go unpunished,” Altair said.  "I will not give you another chance.  Submit and I will only hurt you a little.“

 

"You can’t touch my wings,” Kadar said.  He was bargaining with a cannibal holding a knife, sent to his room by his brother.  (His brother who once incinerated an entire city for a single offense perpetrated by a single stupid boy.)  "I can’t leave here if you do.“

 

Altair smiled and the flat-sharp-edges of his teeth were glistening with saliva.  ”Malik has told me what he can heal.  He has told me where I can hurt you and for how long before he cannot repair the damage.  I listened carefully.   _Lay down_.” 

 

The alternative was fire, the sort there was no cure for, so Kadar shuffled forward and got to his knees.  Altair’s smile was so very pleased, like the smile of a human mother doting on a well-behaved child.  Then he put his hand on top of Kadar’s head and pushed him down so he was laying with his face resting against his crossed arms.  

 

The pain was not the significant part of the lesson that Altair delivered.  It wasn’t the hurt—although it was intense and constant, a great twisting tear of ceaseless agony—but the _fear_  that the knife would slip.  That Altair’s endless hunger would overcome the tight leash of control Malik thought to maintain on him.  

 

When it was done and Kadar had only enough energy to drag himself into the corner of his room—his limp and bleeding wings loosely following after—Altair was kneeling in the puddle of his blood licking his hands and arms clean.  His humming pleasure at the taste was as _humiliating_  as being forced to be still while he was stabbed and cut and gouged.  As _painful_  as the gashes that ran between the bones of his wings almost-but-not-quite deep enough to cut through them.  

 

But it was the gleaming-golden-eyes of the monster that _terrified_  him.  The hungry beast that ate only the flesh of still-living demons.  The one that was sick with gluttonous pleasure at tasting Kadar’s blood.  

 

Malik burnt the spell off the doorway.  Altair was sucking the blood off two of his fingers when he saw his master and was filled with pride at what a good job he had done.  Malik was an inconstant orange-and-red, angry enough to heat the room but not so furious as to reduce them to ash.  

 

"What have you learned?” Malik asked him.  He eyed the damage to his wings and the splits in the back of his thighs.  

 

“Not to touch what’s yours,” Kadar said softly.  He had known that before and accepted the consequences long before they came for him.  That was something entirely different than forcing himself to look at Malik’s face and wait for final judgment to be passed.

 

“Good,” Malik said, “go to the kitchen, I will heal you.”


	28. Altair says Thank You

Malik ignored the way limp way Kadar laid belly-down on the table with his wings spread weakly out and drooping.  The gashes that covered them were precise and even.  Kadar’s face was resting on his crossed arms.

 

There were bite marks on his forearm that had to have come from his own teeth.  The red meat that showed through his split skin was appetizingly split and yet Altair had not tried to bite it.  (Which showed a great deal more restraint that Malik might have given him credit for.)  He spread the thickening paste on the wounds and sprinkled a fresh dusting of bone powder across them.  

 

“Do you think he’ll be worth all of this?” Kadar asked.  

 

“I think you have brought this on yourself.”

 

“Think of the demons that will die to make your pet monster strong enough to fuck,” Kadar said.  He didn’t open his eyes or raise his voice but there was enough accusation in the quiet whisper to make his point known.  “You do not even know what he will be capable of.”

 

Malik looked at the wounds again.  “I have seen what he is capable of.  As you have.  When he picked him out of all the humans that you could have chosen, you knew what he was.”

 

Kadar said nothing else.  Malik stayed only long enough to be sure the paste was working to heal the wounds before he went to find his pet sleeping in the nest with his long (and naked) body wrapped awkwardly around Desmond.  Desmond had the look of a man who desperately wanted to be free but who had relented if only to save his own skin.  Altair’s fingertips had already started hardening into claws that were pressed deep enough into Desmond’s side to dimple his flesh.  His face—full of teeth growing steadily sharper—was pressed against Desmond’s chest.

 

Then there was the sound he made in his sleep, the rattle of a purr at his contentment to be warm and close to someone.  The chain that was coiled around his arm a forgotten burden and his hunger a dim memory.  His wings were forming tiny strips of flesh over exposed bones even as the skin on the back of his shoulders and down his arms started to darken to the charcoal-black-gray that aura demons typically turned.  

 

“Please take him,” Desmond whispered.

 

Altair opened his eyes and a second set of eyelids slid vertically across his gleaming-eyes.  His lips spread into a smile as he got up to his feet.  The chain dragged on the ground when he stood.  “Will he survive?”

 

“Yes,” Malik assured him.

 

“Will he scar?”

 

“No.”  Blood demons did not scar.  All of their skin molted when they evolved.  He motioned Altair after him to their room and frowned at the damage he had done to his wall.  Anger had a way of stealing all sense from him.  It would not take long to smooth the wall if he allowed himself to become angry again but absent that fury, it would take some time to concentrate his will power to fix the damage.  Rather than bother, he found a smooth place on the wall and  pressed his palm against it to heat it enough to push the anchor at the end of the chain through it.  

 

“How should I thank you?” Altair asked.  “You said I had to finish eating, then I could thank you.”  He was unashamedly naked and noticeably aroused at the idea of thanking him.  Even fragile and pale and breakable, he was still arrogant enough to assume his display was welcomed.  

 

(But it was, wasn’t it.)  Malik said, “I want to watch you.  Pleasure yourself.”

 

Altair did not pause to be coy or attempt to do anything but lick his long-slick-tongue across his palm and drop it down to pull lazily at his cock.  He stared at Malik’s face even after Malik stopped looking at his to watch the motion of his hand and wrist and the reddened head of his dick growing damp.  

 

It did not last long.  Altair was shameless in his drive to orgasm and it came swiftly.  He lifted his hand—smeared with his own semen—up as an offering and Malik reached out with one fingertip to push Altair’s hand toward his own mouth.  “Clean yourself,” Malik said.  

 

Oh and the greedy bastard lapped at the mess of it with his throat vibrating moans that made the air taste like sex.  He sucked on his fingers with his eyes half-closed and his cheeks pinked with delight.  Malik hated him for being breakable in equal measure to how desperately he wanted to fuck the grinning bastard.  “Now sleep,” Malik said.  “Tomorrow we have to find you some more to eat.”


	29. Chapter 29

Years-and-years-and-years ago, (now), when Mother was ill but still alive she said, _protect your brother.  He cannot lose his way._   Because Mother had been alive since the dawn of demons when the newly turned humans rebelled against the chaos demons that reigned over them with tyrannical power.  She saved Malik because he was small but powerful and because above all things, Mother wanted to live.

 

Kadar was dreary with pain and the ebb-and-flow of the healing spell draining his body of energy.  The wounds felt hot and full and the smell of his own blood filled his senses.  His thoughts wandered like skipping stones, picking up this and that and replaying memories and old thoughts.  

 

He woke up (like a snapped rubber band) to a dreary darkness in the sky.  There was no rain but a chill that spread quick-and-slick across the ground and grew like white ghosts in the air.  Kadar scrambled off the table, landed on his feet and went toward the back of the house.  He slapped both his hands on the door to push it open.  

 

(His Mother told him once, of the terrible wasteland that hell had become when the chaos demons laid down to hibernate.  She spoke of ice and darkness that burned away the fertile soil and left the weak as fleshy statues.)

 

“Malik!” Kadar shouted.  

 

His brother was on _fire_ , standing in a blackened ring in the yard with flames covering every part of his body.  They rose like a great pillar of white-blue-flames from the ground beneath his feet to the distant barrier of their sky.  The _noise_  of it was immense, a hungry-rushing sound that pumped blood urgently through Kadar’s body.  It left him feeling terribly _small._

“Malik!” Kadar screamed again.  He was barefoot on the ground that was cracking from the gathering cold.  The frosted chill sank through his body like knives and his jaw began to shake at the intolerable cold.  “Malik!” he screamed again.  

 

When the flames dimmed they turned red and small, collapsing in on themselves until they were only here-and-there licking at the cracks in Malik’s skin that burnt brown and red like a great living force; the molten core of the world itself.  Malik cocked his head at the sound of his own name as if he could not remember it.  

 

His horns had grown longer and thicker.  His shoulders were massive with bristling force as his body pushed itself upward in a show of dominance.  He was taller now than he had been, his hands were massive and the claws that grew off them had doubled in length.  He had spikes rising from the backs of his hands and a fresh trail of glassy-scales that started under his jaw and ran down to his collarbone.  His wings were blackened from the heat, shaking loose ash as they twitched at his back.  

 

“What have you done?” Kadar asked.

 

“They will come,” Malik said.  “They will all come when they find the massacre I left behind.  They will remember, as the witch demon remembered before he died, the respect and _fear_  that is owed to me.”  

 

Gray-black snow began to fall and Kadar hugged his arms around his body.  “You’re going to kill your pet if you don’t break the spell,” Kadar said.  “What good will any of this do if he’s dead?”

 

Malik smiled and it was _terrifying_.  But he spread his wings and the cold shattered in a sudden rush of heat that made the air all around him seem to spark with fire and sent thunder and lightning rushing through the sky.  Malik’s skin was cooled when exposed to the air beyond his containment spell and it settled into a normal flesh-color with only the small veins of heat still running under his scales.  “Do not be scared, Kadar.”

 

“You evolved,” Kadar said.  “You haven’t done that since before Mom died.  Malik--this isn’t the way.”

 

“If they come to take what is mine, I will sear their shadows into the soil.”  He reached out to cup Kadar’s face in his hand and he smiled.  “Find me the witch demon’s child.  It was a fat thing, it must be starving by now.”

 

Kadar had seconds (not minutes) to think before Malik made it to the door.  In that time he tried grasping at the many-many things his Mother had taught him and found almost none that would bring some sense back into his brother’s head.  He turned with a quick snap of his wings, “if you mean to rule hell, you have to do more than scare people.  Mother said true rulers provide for their subjects!  You have provided nothing but suffering.”

 

Malik rolled his eyes.  “What should I do?”

 

“Make fields.”

 

“They will think that I mean to fatten them up so they will taste better for my pet,” Malik said.  “I do not care what they do.  I only need them to remember that what belongs to me is sacred and their lives are not.”

 

Well, if that was all.  “If you fatten them up, they will make more demons.  The more demons that live here, the stronger you will become.”  It wasn’t unreasonable.  “It is not only our small portion of hell that hates aura demons.  There is none among our kind that want a cannibal to be allowed to live.  You need allies.”

 

“Find me the witch demon’s child,” Malik said.  “I will think on the rest.”


	30. Chapter 30

Altair woke to a fine sheen of sweat across his body and the sensation of having been rapidly warmed.  He rolled onto his back on the smooth floor (before he could remember why laying on his half-grown wings was a bad idea) and then sat up with the sharp stabbing pain jerked him into full alertness.  He scratched at the smooth stretch of his new skin that covered his throat and then looked around for where Malik had gone.  

“I’m hungry!” he shouted at the hallway that separated him from the other rooms.  “Desmond!”

 

Malik’s cowering little pet wouldn’t come to feed him.  It was for the best since there was nothing here that Altair wanted to eat.  (Except Kadar, except he could not think about eating Kadar because he could not kill Kadar.)  

 

Altair looked at his hands, at the tied little glowing strings that looked around his fingers and tried to find the one that led him to Malik.  He couldn’t touch them but he could feel them itching-and-pulling at him all the time.  When he concentrated (on how hungry he was) he could find the strings that led him to food.  They blushed up pink and red.  

 

He was trying to imagine what tasty morsel lay at the end of the string.  He wanted (very much) to pull the string until it brought him something to eat.  It would be _convenient_  for him if it were so easy.  

 

All his wondering did not bring him fresh, delicious meat but Malik (larger now than he had been when he left) carrying blistering heat into the room.  He was covered in black-and-gray ash that had cooled into thick patches and hardened into rock-like-things caught in the creases of his wings.  He had a golden chain in his hand with a clip on one end and a rock on the other. 

 

“You are filthy,” Altair said.

 

“You will have to wash me then.”  Malik motioned him up to his feet and pinched his fingers around the link that held the silver chain on Altair’s collar.  It melted between his thumb and forefinger and dropped to the floor.  The gold chain was lighter (barely noticeable) and longer.  Malik carried the stone on the opposite end out of the little home and to the yard where Desmond was already dropping buckets of water.  

 

“Water?” Altair said.  

 

Malik dropped the stone and turned around to face him.  He spread his wings and a litter of debris fell from them.  “I like to take a bath at least once every century.  The human cannot stay.  He will be boiled to death by the steam.”

 

Altair went to pick up the first bucket. The chain uncoiled from the lazy pile it had dropped in but it stopped when it was straight.  The inconsequential looking stone would not move no matter how he pulled on it.  He was _annoyed_  when he threw the first bucket of water on Malik.  It hit his skin and turned to steam instantly.  The hissing sound it made was dulled only by the thick fog of ashy smoke that billowed up into the air.  “Why did you decide to bathe today?”

 

“I’m expecting guests,” Malik said.  

 

“I don’t think they will comment on your cleanliness,” Altair said.  He picked up the next bucket of water and threw it on Malik.  

 

When the steam cleared, Malik was smiling so sweetly.  He was rubbing his thumb across the new growth of his horns as if he only just realized how they had gotten longer.  “This is less about cleanliness and more about self-defense.  Chaos demons can be extinguished.  It requires a great deal of cooperation and a great deal of water.”

 

Altair threw another bucket of water on him and covered his face with his arm.  The taste of the foul ash was thick across his tongue–unpleasant and sticky.  “How does this help?”

 

“This is practice.  My mother taught me how to survive if someone were to attempt to extinguish me.  The key is maintaining control.  If I get angry, I am easier to put out.  If I am like this, my scales and my skin protect me.”

 

Oh, of course.  Altair picked up the last bucket and threw it on Malik.  When the steam cleared, he hardly looked less filthy than he had at the start.  The ash was still thick on his wings and clinging to the spaces between his scales.  “Now what?”

 

“Now you can clean my wings.  Your new claws will be perfectly suited to the task.”  Malik spread his wings and fluttered them slightly before motioning Altair to get to work.  “Do not pout.  If you pout I will not feed you.”

 

Altair did not pout.  He glowered.  He thought hateful things.  He made plans to find a way to smother Malik into smooth-cool-nothingness as he plucked the hardened bits of ash off his wings.


	31. Witch Demons' Child is found

Malik called it the ‘witch demon’s child’ but the child was hundreds of years old, round-faced and well-fed.  It was a miserable little ball of unwanted knowledge that had been specifically reared from a lonely (unwanted, human) pet.  Witch demons collected strays and orphans and kept them around in little covens (for lack of a better term) teaching them about how to use spells and potions and other useful things.  Kadar found the child (that was by all rights, far older than him) sitting at the edge of the bloody massacre of it’s whole family.

Kadar’s feet made a dim sound against the dusty ground.  He crossed to where the wingless demon sat with both of its hands pressed to its cheeks.  It was blistered all across its shoulders with red peeling burns on its face and down its arms.  When it saw him it made a shrieking sound and scuttled away on hands-and-knees toward the bloated, broken-open body of its father.  It pressed its face against the cracked ribs and covered its head with a pitiful wail.  

 

Witch demons were notorious pack creatures; they did not live long without companions.  

 

Kadar looked around at the dead.  They were burnt and spread out along the singed outline of a massive circle of burnt dirt.  The witch demon’s home had been split open and burnt out.  Most of Malik’s outburst were instant reactions that almost always ended with an inadvertent evolution.  This was exacting and cruel.  Altair had a buffet of meat to eat at his leisure and every one of his meals was still living when he cut their hearts out.  

 

He went over to stand at the feet of the witch demon and looked at its child.  Malik said he had to find it but he did not say that he had to return it.  So he watched the child rubbing its face on the corpse.  The trouble with Malik’s fury and his growing ego was that nothing would help it until he got what he wanted.  

 

“Are you going to eat it?” Kadar asked.

 

The little witch demon turned around to look at him with terrible guilt on its face.  Its vision was no doubt already failing but it’s hooked fingers were digging into the pale, bloodless flesh of its dead father.  Its mouth was open with a slickly wet sound as drool poured out over its lips.  

 

“Well, it’s not like your father wouldn’t expect you to do it.  Eat.”  

 

Then the little witch demon went looking for one of the bone knives its kind used to carve their meals.  It was etched with special symbols that allowed the witch demon to absorb what they could from the dead.  Altair had already eaten the important bits but there was plenty of flesh left that some knowledge could be gleaned from.  

 

Kadar stood and watched the little witch demon eat.  “I hope I never go through puberty.  Maybe if he gets laid he’d calm down.  Is there a spell to make someone fireproof?”

 

The witch demon sat back on it’s knees with a long strip of cut-free flesh dangling from its mouth.  For a moment it was quiet and then it nodded.  “But it is very old and the words are many.  A blood demon would not survive the inscription.”

 

No of course not.  “Why?”

 

“The pain would kill you.”  The witch demon cut another bit for it to eat and chewed it with delicate teeth and bitterly pleased noises.  “Higher demons are needed, ones that can heal quickly.  There are not many and there have been none successful.”

 

“Are you going to carve the others?” Kadar asked.  He looked back over at the witch demon’s burnt out house.  The box they kept their food in had been charred but it was still cool when he opened it.  He dragged it out to where the witch demon was tearing away bits of flesh to keep for later.  “I have to take you to him.”

 

“A demon came earlier.  It saw the dead.  It ran.”  

 

“Maybe you should cut a little faster then.” 


	32. Malik greets guests, Altair gets fed

Malik’s new body was a strange fit.  He had avoided the task of evolution for decades simply out of disinterest in having to relearn how to manage his own body again.  It was an inconvenient time (perhaps) for him to do it now save for how his new height and the heavier set of muscles on his arms and chest offered him an even more intimidating appearance against the terrified-and-angry horde of demons that would come.  

 

They came all at once, a great stomping of feet and fluttering of wings.  The slithering scuttle of the cherubs with their glittery black bodies and their gaping-open mouths.  The young-and-the-old and the wingless came in a swell of bodies to crowd into the yard behind his home.  

 

Malik turned his head toward them but did not move his body.  One of his wings was fully extended and the other was half-folded behind his back.  Altair was grumbling to himself as he picked at the dried flakes of ash.  Desmond (the skittish human pet) was hovering by the door and went very white at the sight of so many demons.  “Why have you come?” Malik asked.

 

The chosen leader was a demon nearly as tall and broad as Malik.  Its chest was scarred from centuries of wars waged.  It may have once had wings (Malik had the thought that it must have) but now there were only the stumps that rose from its back and twitched in aggravation when it spoke.  It’s horns were sharp and turned upward like a bull, an image made all the more apt by the ring that went through its nose.  “What reason did you have to kill the witch demon?” it asked him.

 

Malik did turn then and Altair followed his wing when he moved.  The sound of his breathing had changed (undoubtedly from the smell of delicious food so close) but the need for his obedience was understood without comment.  “It displeased me,” Malik said.  “It harmed something that belongs to me.”  He snapped his wings shut and Altair stood there with a scowl on his face and a chunk of something stuck between two of his claws.  The golden chain that restrained him was glowing a faint color (indicating how terribly hungry his lover was).  

 

Aura demons were revolting to other demons.  The instant feeling of unease they brought passed through the crowd like a physical shudder that spared none.  Even the leader was momentarily stricken and mute.  When it spoke again, it _hissed_ , “that kind is forbidden.”

 

“He is mine,” Malik said.  Control was of the utmost importance.  If he betrayed his anger, his skin would grow thin and it would be easier to extinguish him.  He reached his hand out and curled his fingers in toward his palm.  Altair came closer to him with easy-obedience (something that Malik would have to reward him for) and did not flinch when Malik’s finger touched his chest.  “You have all lived in my shadow these many years, reaping the benefits and offering nothing in return.  I have asked nothing and we have managed a congenial relationship.”  He looked away from Altair and the ashy-white burn he’d left on his chest.  The crowd was transfixed by the sight of their living nightmare (so well-behaved).  “If any one of you that lives here in my _shadow_  tries to take what is mine, I will _decimate_  your families.  I do not need your flesh to feed my pet.  There are many in hell that deserve to die, we have been without an executioner for far too long.”

 

“We have not served you because you are weak,” the leader said.

 

 _Control_  was the most important thing.  His mother had taught him that all the years of his childhood.  She had drenched him in water and commanded him to breath fire over his tongue.  His skin (she told him) was the only thing that saved him.  He could not compromise the integrity of his skin.  Malik drew a breath in through his nose and let it grow hot inside of his chest.  The scales on his neck heated and the weakest and least willing of the group shifted around in front of him.  Their leader stood in open defiance.  

 

Malik opened his mouth again and _fire_  came out with a great sound (a roar) and a spark of orange-and-red that filled the space between them and engulfed the leader.  Its scream was a pitiful sound as it lifted its arms up and flailed in pain.  Malik turned to Altair, “eat it before it dies.”  Then he flapped his wings once to put the flames out and the leader fell.  

 

Altair moved with swift-and-terrifying agility.  His hands caught the freshly charred meal by the arm and dragged it back to the safety of the space closest to Malik.  Altair’s claws were strong enough to tear through the weeping, burnt flesh and he dug out the organs he liked the best.  The sound of his gluttony was liquid and ferocious in the sudden quiet.  

 

“I will teach you how to make fields,” Malik said.  “In return for your loyalty, I will not feed you to my pet.  All that oppose me will die.”  He looked down at Altair crouching over his meal with both of his hands greedily shoving stringy bits of red meat into his jaws.  “All that follow me will prosper.”

 

Demons were fickle things, drawn to displays of great power.  Altair was their worst nightmare but he was a nightmare on a chain and Malik was the one that controlled him.  They looked at Malik with fear (as they should) and bowed their heads and went away in shame with promises of loyalty.


End file.
